‘It would hardly do that. Somebody is sure to report a stolen car, but why burn it?’ I said.
‘Just bloody-mindedness,’ said Anthony.
6
Arson
« ^ »
The first upshot of the butter affair was bizarre if not instructive. To pacify Celia and help him to get himself reinstated in her good graces, Anthony went over to the school to reason with Coberley, only to find that his arguments had been used already by Marigold herself. He came back with the story.
‘Marigold wouldn’t have it that any boy was guilty,’ he said. ‘She had a curious story to tell. She had been standing at the sitting-room window when she heard a voice call out, “Oh, Mrs Coberley, a goat is eating your kitchen garden!” ’
The school, it appeared, had a number of pet animals looked after by the boys, so Marigold ran out and immediately took her nasty toss down the steps. Coberley’s inquisition of his pupils had not produced a culprit and he had issued his threat in the heat of the moment.
When Anthony met him he was already beginning to simmer down. He said that he had instituted enquiries among his staff and it appeared that no boy had been missing from lessons or from games at any time, and the headmaster’s house was strictly out of bounds. He was telling Anthony this when there was a knock on the door of his sanctum and a small, pale boy wearing spectacles came in. The dialogue had run as follows:
‘Well, Duckett?’
‘Please, sir, I’ve come to confess, sir.’
‘Who sent you?’
‘Please, sir, Robson and the other prefects, sir.’
‘To confess to what, Duckett?’
‘Please, sir, that I buttered the steps.’
‘You?’
‘Yes, sir, please, sir.’
‘I find this incredible. Did you butter the steps?’
‘Please, sir, no, sir, but Robson said it was right that one man should die for the people.’
‘Did he, indeed?’ Upon this (Anthony said), Coberley rang the bell and sent a servant to find Robson — ‘he should be with Mr Stace in B room’ — and bring him to the headmaster. Soon a handsome child of about thirteen appeared.
‘You sent for me, sir?’
‘Yes, Robson. Duckett, you may go. Now, Robson, what is all this I hear? (Robson, Mr Wotton, is my head boy.)’
‘How do you do, sir.’ He and Anthony shook hands.
‘Now, Robson, explain yourself. I know you too well to believe that you would wantonly offer me a lamb such as Duckett for the slaughter. You must have had a good reason.’
‘Oh, sir, yes, sir. We knew you would not beat a little boy like Duckett, sir, so we thought he was the best one to send, being delicate and wearing glasses.’
‘Duckett did not butter the steps, then?’
‘No, sir, of course not, sir. Nobody did.’
‘Then how came the steps to be buttered?’
‘I don’t know, sir. We’re sure none of our men did it. That’s what I meant, sir. I mean, sir, we wouldn’t, would we?’
‘How can I be sure of that?’ It was clear, said Anthony, that the head boy was a privileged person, ‘as it is right and proper that a head boy should be,’ he added.
‘Well, nobody would want to hurt Mrs Coberley, would they, sir? Besides, if chaps have got money, they wouldn’t spend it on butter; they would spend it on things like doughnuts, wouldn’t they, sir?’
‘Very well. I shall suspend judgment sine die. Do you know what that means?’
‘Oh, yes, sir. My father is a QC.’
‘You might do worse than follow in his footsteps.’
‘I am going to be a psychologist, sir,’
‘That might suit your undoubted gifts equally well. All right. Be off with you.’
‘They size you up, don’t they?’ said Anthony, when the lad had gone. ‘He needn’t worry about “going to be a psychologist”. He is one already.’
‘They all are,’ said Coberley.
‘It wasn’t a boy’s voice which Marigold heard,’ said Celia, when Anthony reported the visit.
‘So she appears to have told Coberley. Anyway, he is taking no action for the present. He is beginning to think it might have been the work of town hooligans. He caught two of them a few months ago trying to steal the couple of geese the boys keep as pets.’
The affair might have remained at that, but for a report from Aunt Eglantine. Celia visited her in hospital and came back with the story. The elderly lady had had no intention of going into the town on the morning of her accident. She had popped downstairs to pick up the tray of coffee and toast and at about ten o’clock she had gone to the old house ‘to look at the picture you said was a Rubens,’ she told Celia. She had tried the front door, discovered, of course, that she could not get in, so had gone round to the back and found the broken window. She demolished the rest of it so that the aperture was wide enough to accept her bulk, ‘and then that creature came along and helped me in. She is stronger than she looks,’ she said.
‘Did you expect to see her?’ Celia asked.
‘Yes and no.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘That silly couple who bogged their car down said she was there in the old house, but I thought she might have gone.’
‘She must have slept there. I wonder what she did for food and bedding?’ Celia had said. ‘There was nobody in the house when Anthony went over yesterday, though.’
‘I suppose she didn’t want anybody to know she was there. She asked me why I had come. I told her I wanted to see a picture,’ Aunt Eglantine had continued. ‘She said that she had taken it upstairs, as people could get into the house and she did not want it stolen. I did not believe her when she declared it was her property, and I looked in all the downstairs rooms to find it, but it wasn’t there. She said that if I wanted to see it I would have to mount the stairs.’
Apparently Aunt Eglantine had decided, very rashly, to do this, but rickety stairs which might have sustained Gloria’s meagre frame proved unequal to the old lady’s much greater weight and she had come crashing down.
‘And Gloria left her lying there,’ said Celia, telling us the story in a voice that trembled. ‘Left her lying there in the hall with a broken leg, and slammed the front door after herself with poor Aunt unable to get any help until Corin found her. I never heard of anything more callous.’
After I had found Aunt Eglantine lying amid the ruins of the staircase and had run back to the house, I had left the front door on the catch so that the ambulance men could get in. After they had removed the old lady to hospital I had gone back to have a look round. The nail on which the picture had hung was still there, and so was the patch on the wall where the picture had shielded the wallpaper from the sun, but the picture itself had disappeared. Whether Gloria really had braved the dangerous staircase and taken the picture upstairs, or whether she had made off with it, there was no way of telling at that juncture.
Anthony sent in his gardener to clear up the mess. ‘Make sure you leave room to get the front door open again,’ he said to the man. ‘Tomorrow I’ll have to hire a truck and get all the muck taken down to the council dump. We can’t deal with it here.’
‘Make a nice bonfire and help me burn a lot of garden rubbish which I got piling up, Mr Wotton, eh, sir?’
‘Oh, all right, then. Leave it until tomorrow and I’ll come and give you a hand.’
‘If I split up the big pieces of wood, sir, I reckon a couple of wheelbarrows would shift it.’
‘Means several journeys. Make it three wheelbarrows,’ I said, ‘if you know where to borrow an extra one.’
‘Thanks, Corin,’ said Anthony. ‘We’ve got two and Coberley will lend me another.’
However, it rained all the next day, so the heap of wood remained in situ, except that the gardener and his son, a lad of about fourteen who, I’m pretty sure, ought to have been in school, split up the woodwork of the staircase into manageable lengths and piled it up in the
hall. When Anthony and I went over there in waterproofs and tweed hats, the result looked like an unlighted funeral pyre.
Now that Aunt Eglantine was in hospital, I was the only guest left in the house, so I suggested that it was about time I went, too. Anthony, echoed by Celia, vetoed this.
‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘I know you were only invited to stay for a week, but we need you here. Are you tired of our company already?’
‘No, of course not,’ I said, ‘but with all the upsets — well, you know.’
‘What upsets?’ he said. ‘Some ill-natured lout smears grease on stone steps and an unsuspecting woman comes a cropper, but it didn’t happen here and is no business of ours. A silly old lady who ought to have had more sense elects to climb an obviously unsafe staircase and breaks a limb. That didn’t happen here, either. Two young idiots choose an impassable lane in torrential rain, get bogged down, and one of them catches a nasty cold. That didn’t happen here. The one incident which did happen here — deplorable though it was from some aspects — turned out well. It rid us of Gloria Mundy.’
He spoke too soon. We were not rid of Gloria Mundy, not by a long chalk. I found afterwards that I remembered the evening well. The rain had eased off again at Thursday lunchtime, so I had spent the afternoon cruising around in my car. It was pleasant to get out into the countryside after having been confined to the house because of the return of the wet weather. I took the long hill up to Rodborough and then drove across the high, flat, seemingly boundless expanse of the common, had a look at the Long Stone and so on to Minchinhampton, with its seventeenth-century pillared market hall.
From here I went on to Nailsworth, crossed westwards over a prehistoric landscape with a tumulus and a long barrow on it and then swung north to Nympsfield. I had plenty of time in hand, so, instead of going straight back to Beeches Lawn, I turned south again to get a glimpse of Owlpen manor house and then went on to Uley.
I left the car at the roadside, called at a cottage for the key and the candle which were kept there — nobody was in, but the key, the candle and a box of matches were there for the borrowing — then I made my way on foot to the long barrow known locally as Hetty Pegler’s Tump.
This involved a walk on a rough but well-trodden path alongside a big field. The path was bordered by bushes on the right-hand side, but my objective was straight ahead of me and could not be missed. I went up to it, carrying my candle, matches and the key, and looked doubtfully at the very low wooden doorway with which the Ministry of Works had replaced the original neolithic stone portal, and decided not to make use of the key after all.
My shoes were already muddy and almost soaked through, and I could see no way of insinuating myself into the tomb without getting my clothes covered in mud, for to get inside the long barrow involved, so far as I could determine, crawling in on hands and knees.
However, the view from Hetty Pegler was well worth the visit. Like other long barrows — I am thinking particularly of Belas Knap on Cleeve Cloud — Hetty Pegler’s Tump was high up and furnished the widest possible views except those gained from an aeroplane. Particularly there was the gleam of silver which I knew was the Severn and I could even make out the Welsh mountains on the other side of it, and, nearer at hand, the dips and slopes and autumn colouring of the wolds.
I returned the key, candle and matches and drove back to Beeches Lawn by a hilly, wooded road which writhed about, but took me to the railway station and so home. We dined earlier than usual that evening. I was missing the other guests, but it was what people call ‘a good miss’. I am not a very sociable man, preferring, as I do, my own company to that of others. In this case, moreover, none of the house-party, with the exception of Dame Beatrice, had appealed to me much, although I would have made an exception in favour of Marigold Coberley. However, her husband had guarded her with such a jealous eye that it was difficult even to get speech with her, let alone the tête-à-tête I would have liked.
After dinner Anthony said he had a vestry meeting and left us. Celia refused to have the drawing-room curtains drawn, although those in the dining-room had been closed. She said there would be what she called ‘a stormy sunset’ and she wanted to enjoy it. The drawing-room was exceptionally large. It had a huge bay window with china cabinets built in on either side and in the same wall there was a glass-topped door which opened on to the path round the lawn. On one side of the fireplace there were shelves for bric-à-brac and on the other side there was another window from which the copper beech tree dominated the outlook. I stood at this window and thought how pleasant domesticity could be.
There was a long ridge of low-lying cloud behind the hills and the evening light which came in through the big bay window to my right threw lurid colour from the setting sun on to the further wall. Celia wanted to go up on to the roof to get a fuller view of the sunset, but I demurred at first. It would be chilly up there, I said, and, after the rain, the leads would be slippery and could be dangerous. I reminded her of Marigold’s accident.
However, she insisted, so we put on wraps, climbed the stairs and went along a passage to where a trap-door and a loft ladder could take us on to the flat part of the roof.
‘Hullo,’ said Celia, when we had emerged. ‘Where’s all that smoke coming from? Something must be on fire.’
‘Perhaps your gardener is having his bonfire without waiting for our help,’ I said.
‘Nonsense, Corin! It’s the old house!’
It was fortunate that the town was so near. The fire brigade reached us in a matter of minutes. I left Celia in the house and went along to see the conflagration. The old house was a mass of flames. There was billowing smoke and crackling wood and, although the fire brigade soon had the situation under control, the damage was done and where the old house had stood there soon remained nothing but a charred mess of burnt wood deluged with water and the grim skeleton of blackened walls.
‘So much for that,’ said Celia, when I told her, but there was more, far more, to come.
‘Was the property insured?’ I asked Anthony when he returned to the house. He said that it was, but only the fabric itself, as any furniture had been moved out long ago.
‘What I can’t make out,’ he went on, ‘is how the fire started, especially after all the rain we’ve had.’
‘Hooligans. Probably the same gang as were responsible for Mrs Coberley’s accident, don’t you think?’
‘If so, it’s a police matter. I shall see to it that every enquiry is made. An empty house does not go up in flames because of internal combustion.’
‘I suppose — I mean, Miss Brockworth did tell us that she had met Miss Mundy in there,’ I said tentatively.
‘Oh, Aunt Eglantine will say anything which comes into her head. She is not to be relied on. I’m sure Gloria was far enough away before Aunt climbed into the house and had her accident when the staircase collapsed. The old nuisance has a bee in her bonnet. She didn’t meet the girl there. All the same, the house must have been set on fire deliberately and I’m going to find out who did it. It was just a piece of wanton destruction on a par with all the other lawless, senseless behaviour which goes on nowadays, and somehow it’s got to be stopped.’
‘Easier said than done,’ I remarked. ‘In these cases of wilful damage by louts the police seem to be helpless.’
However, they were not so helpless as to ignore a most grievous occurrence which was the aftermath of the fire. What hit us next day was the appalling news that a body had been found among the charred embers of the old house.
The news was brought by the gardener. He came up to the house early next morning and asked to see Anthony. Anthony was busy. He was one of the churchwardens of a church in the town and he and his companion-in-office had planned to go over the church accounts before they submitted them to the usual auditors, so he told the maid who came with the message to refer the gardener to Celia.
I knew about this because I was with Celia at the time. We were in the little garden room to whi
ch he already had brought some fine hothouse chrysanthemums for the vases. I was stripping the lower leaves from the tall, woody stems and getting in some gentle tapping on them with a light hammer, and she was doing the flower arrangements. The gardener, who had been kept at the back door while the maid apprised Anthony of his arrival, was shown into the garden room on Anthony’s orders.
‘I’m sorry, mum,’ he said, twisting his tweed hat in his enormous hands, ‘but I aimed to have spoke to the master.’
‘He is too busy to see you, Platt. What do you want?’
‘He didn’t ought to be too busy to see me if he knowed what I come about.’
‘Well, you can tell me what you have come about and I will let him know what it is as soon as he is free.’
‘It’s about the old house, mum. Something us found there, me and the lad.’
‘Well, what was it?’
‘Beg pardon, mum, but it’s for the master, not you, if you’ll excuse me. There’s something as the fire chief and me think as he ought to see.“
‘Oh, get on with it, Platt! What is it?’
Even then it did not occur to me, nor, I am sure, to Celia, that he was talking about a burnt and blackened corpse which he had found among the ashes.
7
Ichabod
« ^ »
This shocking news brought along the police, of course. Anthony’s complaint about destructive hooligans went by the board in the face of this far more serious issue. According to the firemen, petrol or paraffin must have been poured over the heap of chopped-up timber in the hall for the house to have burnt so fiercely.
‘If only we’d moved the stuff out instead of my taking time off to go out in my car to visit Hetty Pegler’s Tump!’ I said remorsefully.
‘Nonsense, my dear chap. I put the job off myself because I wanted the fallen leaves swept off the lawn. But this business is the very devil. One of the wretched gang of youths who thought they would amuse themselves by setting fire to the place must have been trapped by the flames or overcome by the smoke, and his mates ran off and left him to it.’
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