Clive did not appear at dinner either, but Great-aunt Puddequet’s convenient assumption that he had been out cycling all the afternoon and had lost his way home relieved the strain of what would have been an intolerable half-hour had the old lady realized the truth, which was that Clive, also tiring of country solitude, had slipped off on his bicycle to Southampton and was playing billiards with a sportsman named ’Arry in a haunt of vice not far removed from the docks. Clive’s natural tastes ran neither to billiards nor to haunts of vice, but he felt that a complete change of surroundings and company would be beneficial to his nerves. Therefore, just as Great-aunt Puddequet was imbibing her bedtime barley water, the sportsman named ’Arry was in process of indicating to Clive Brown-Jenkins that seventeen-and-a-tanner was the amount the umpire declared owing, and Clive, in his pugnacious way, was thrusting forward his powerful jaw, and enquiring exactly where the umpire had learned his bookkeeping. The result of the argument was in the best traditions of the house, and Clive found himself, at ten twenty-four at night, sitting on the most squalid bit of pavement he had ever seen in his life, with an ear that felt like a pumpkin, an eye out of which he could see nothing, thirty-three miles of secondary roads between himself and Little Longer, and no idea of the best way out of town.
Luckily he had left his bicycle at a garage near by, and from the men there he received fairly concise directions as to the route he should follow to get out of town. Clive, furiously conscious of the spectacle he presented, thanked them shortly, mounted, and rode off.
Thirty-three miles is not a long distance, even to a moderate cyclist. To Clive it was a mere hour and a half’s spin, given good roads and a fair knowledge of the way. This time, however, ill luck dogged him. He had barely left the lights of the town behind, when his own lighting set failed. Attempts to resuscitate it proved futile. He remounted, but was obliged to proceed at little more than a jog-trot pace, for, in the darkness, he was afraid of riding into the ditch. Fifteen miles on his way he picked up a puncture. It was impossible to repair it, for he could see nothing, so for five miserable miles he bumped along on a flat rear tube until he could endure the discomfort no longer; he dismounted and walked the rest of the way. At nearly three o’clock in the early morning, a weary, battered, indescribably angry young man, pushing a bicycle, entered the gates of Longer and made his way to his hut.
III
At the ‘Romany’ fancy-dress dance, Celia Brown-Jenkins enjoyed herself. True, she was not in fancy dress—there had been no time to arrange that—but an affectionate maiden and two polite, well-brilliantined young men had met her at Paddington station and carried her off in triumph to the almost West End. At precisely twelve-twelve a.m. another sleek-haired young man was waving his hat at a departing train in which sat Celia. She was rather tired, and a little frightened because she had just realized that nobody had been asked to let her into the house on her return, and that it would be a horribly dark walk from Market Longer station. Seated there in an otherwise empty compartment, she also recollected that, not so many days before, a man had been murdered in the sunk garden; of course, no one was going to murder her, she knew, but, all the same, she felt that she would be just as glad when she was safely in bed.
The train reached Market Longer at twenty minutes past two, and a tired girl of eighteen reached the gates of Longer exactly one hour and twenty minutes later.
She walked up the path to the sports field, opened the wooden door, and skirted the cinder track. On the opposite side of the ground, outside the fence, but rising high above it, she saw the flames of an enormous bonfire.
Celia felt sick.
‘It’s one of the huts!’ she thought. In spite of her weary feet she broke into a trot, and shouted as she ran:
‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’
IV
To add to Miss Caddick’s sense of impending ill, old Mrs Puddequet was suddenly and obstinately smitten with the determination to sit up and play bezique. There were two reasons why Miss Caddick dreaded these attacks, which recurred at intervals of about twelve weeks; one reason was that they made the old lady overexcited, so that when she did at last decide to go to bed she could not sleep, and her wretched companion was compelled to spend the hours of beauty sleep in reading aloud to her; the other reason was that Great-aunt Puddequet awoke on the morning following one of these debauches with a splitting headache and the temper of a fiend.
The book chosen by old Mrs Puddequet on this particular evening was Little Women, and she herself turned over the well-worn pages to find the part of the story best suited to her mood. Miss Caddick dreaded the choice of Little Women as a bed-book, for the old lady, when once the story was launched, declined to be satisfied until, out of sheer exhaustion, she fell asleep. Miss Caddick outlined the adventures of Meg at the Moffats, followed it with the inauguration of young Lawrence as a member of the Pickwick Club, and had reached the very end of the pleasant chapter describing Camp Lawrence, when the listener suddenly started up in bed and cried:
‘What’s that?’
Miss Caddick started nervously, her mind divided between trying to decide whether the sound was the noise of a second murder, or whether Celia Brown-Jenkins had returned from London and broken her neck trying to climb the gate leading into the sunk garden.
Both women listened intently.
‘There it is again!’ said Great-aunt Puddequet. ‘Go and find out who is throwing stones at the window, companion.’
Miss Caddick laid Little Women face downwards on the coverlet and blinked nervously at her employer.
‘I don’t think it is a stone against the window,’ she demurred. ‘It didn’t sound to me like someone throwing stones against the window. The window overlooks the side of the house, Mrs Puddequet, and that noise came from the front.’
‘Then go and see what it is,’ squealed the old lady, ‘and don’t be such a fool!’
Miss Caddick rose from her chair, and very unwillingly proceeded towards the door.
‘I know what it is!’ cried old Mrs Puddequet suddenly. ‘It’s someone banging on the door of the sunk garden. My ridiculous grandson, I expect. What is the hour, Companion Caddick?’
Miss Caddick compared a minute wristwatch with the handsome grandfather clock which stood in the far corner of the room.
‘I make it seventeen minutes to twelve,’ she said, ‘and Mr Golightly makes it eleven minutes to twelve.’ The clock in question was always referred to in this way out of respect for its previous owner, an old gentleman whom Mrs Puddequet had known in her youth.
‘Ah,’ said Great-aunt Puddequet, shaking her head, ‘he’s fast. At any rate, the gate into the sunk garden is locked by this time, so, if Grandson Timon is on the wrong side of it, he can just stay there, that’s all. Go to bed, companion! What are you standing there for?’
Miss Caddick, grateful for any sort of permission to retire, bade her employer a hasty good night, glared nervously both ways on gaining the landing, and then fled like a hare into her own room.
The noise below continued. Someone knocked on Miss Caddick’s door, and the voice of the cook uplifted itself, proclaiming that there was racket below enough to waken the dead, and that, for her part, she would see herself drowned before she would consent to remain any longer under a roof which sheltered murderers and thieves, or in a house where at no hour of the night could a poor body get sleep sufficient to recompense her for the vicissitudes of the day that had gone and to give her strength and energy enough to cope with the trials of the day that was to come.
Miss Caddick replied, through an opening two inches wide, that the cook should return to bed and then all would be well. It was only Mr Timon, she explained. He was locked out, and Mrs Puddequet would not allow him to be admitted to the house.
The cook, with a dark mutter, withdrew, and Miss Caddick had taken off her outermost garment and was removing the second hairpin from her coiffure when a louder and more peremptory knock came at the door. By this time the ‘noises off�
�� had ceased.
‘Who’s there? You can’t come in!’ squeaked Miss Caddick in one breath, quite oblivious of the fact that the door was fast locked. ‘What do you want?’
‘I say, Caddie! Who’s kicking up that infernal din?’
‘Why, Miss Cowes, we think it is Mr Timon,’ fluttered Miss Caddick, tripping lightly to the door and speaking with her lips to the keyhole, from which she had that instant removed the key.
‘I’m going down to see what they want,’ said Amaris, and Miss Caddick could hear her retreating footsteps.
‘It is Celia Brown-Jenkins,’ was Miss Caddick’s final brilliant conclusion, ‘and dear Amaris will let her in.’
Feeling her own responsibility removed in the matter of readmitting Celia to the ancestral hall, Miss Caddick hastily completed her preparations for bed, and scrambled between the sheets.
Great-aunt Puddequet lay awake for a short while, during which time she noted that the noise, whatever its cause, had ceased. The handsome old grandfather clock in the corner struck twelve, and the old lady in bed raised herself on one elbow and remarked in a cracked but friendly voice:
‘Good night, Mr Golightly.’
Then she slept the untroubled sleep of the aged until the confused noise made by a household which has been awakened suddenly from slumber aroused her. Great-aunt Puddequet raised herself on one elbow and listened. A cry of ‘Fire! Fire!’ came to her ears. She reached for the bellrope which hung behind the head of the bed and pulled it vigorously.
V
‘It’s queer,’ said Amaris Cowes slowly. She contemplated Hilary Yeomond in silence for a moment. ‘But what a mercy you were not inside the hut,’ she added.
Hilary laughed.
‘Oh, Moggridge would have wakened me in time,’ he said, patting the dog whose muzzle was on his knee. Moggridge wagged his tail at the mention of his own name, and, against all regulations, Richard Cowes rose and gave him a kidney out of the dish on the sideboard.
‘And what a mercy you hadn’t left him in the hut, either,’ said Priscilla, caressing Moggridge’s left ear.
‘The thing that puzzles me,’ said Richard Cowes, ‘is how the hut could have caught fire, because I know you put the lamp out before you came up to the house here with me, Yeomond. It was a lucky thing for you that our great-aunt has the sunk garden gate locked so early, or you might have tried getting back to your hut when we had finished our game.’
‘Game, Grandnephew?’ said old Mrs Puddequet, whose bathchair was at that moment wheeled into the breakfast room by Miss Caddick.
‘Yes, Great-aunt. I invited Yeomond into the dining room last night to play chess. As we did not finish until after one, I persuaded him to camp on the chesterfield instead of breaking out of the house. I myself slept in an armchair, and very comfortably too.’
Before anyone else could make a remark, Malpas Yeomond dropped a bomb by observing casually:
‘Inspector Bloxham is coming up the steps to investigate a case of attempted murder.’
‘What?’ exclaimed his sister.
‘Rubbish, Grandnephew,’ squealed old Mrs Puddequet. ‘Refrain from wilful exaggeration.’
‘I sent for Constable Copple at just after six this morning,’ said Richard Cowes coolly, ‘and invited him to look at the burnt-out hut. It has one most suggestive feature. Constable Copple is not a man of great imaginative powers, but even he was roused to quite a show of animation by what I had to show him. Malpas has seen it too.’
The announcement that the inspector was in the hall and would be glad of a word with the owner of the house cut short Richard’s remarks. Great-aunt Puddequet’s bathchair, again propelled by Miss Caddick, went out to give audience to a grave-eyed Bloxham.
‘I’d like you to come and take a look at this hut, Mrs Puddequet,’ he said shortly. ‘I don’t know whether your house is harbouring a maniac, or what.’
He addressed a question to Miss Caddick in a low tone as the bathchair crunched over the cinder track three minutes later.
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Miss Caddick, so softly that the inspector was obliged to strain his ears to catch the words, ‘she can get about without it, but only with the help of two sticks and, of course, always someone with her. But even then it is very slow work for her, poor thing.’
The inspector nodded as though he were satisfied and dropped behind to speak to Joseph Herring, who was wheeling a barrow towards the sunk garden. Immediately he was out of earshot, old Mrs Puddequet turned round venomously and hissed at her escort, ‘You’re a fool, Companion Caddick! How dare you show your contempt for your employer by calling her a poor thing?’
Miss Caddick gasped in anguish, and exclaimed shrilly:
‘Oh, but, Mrs Puddequet! Oh, but, Mrs Puddequet, I mean—well, I mean, nothing would be farther from my thoughts, dear Mrs Puddequet. You must surely know that. I only meant—well, I mean, we all have our little cross to bear, and I’m quite, quite sure, dear Mrs Puddequet—’
The protestations were cut short by the return of the inspector. The three went through the gate of the sports field and were soon at a point of vantage from which they could view the melancholy remains of Hilary Yeomond’s hut.
Here the inspector was joined by the sergeant and by the village policeman, Constable Copple, who had evidently been left on guard at the ruins. Apart from the blackened desolation and the greyish ashes, the attention of the onlooker was chiefly attracted by two tall iron rods which were standing upright in the ground at a distance of eight inches from one another. They were all still warm to the touch.
‘Inspector!’ squealed Great-aunt Puddequet excitedly. Unable to attract his immediate attention, she prodded him vigorously in the small of the back with her umbrella. The sergeant slid an apologetic hand across a grin and requested her to be patient. Great-aunt Puddequet had no intention of being anything of the kind. She rocked the bathchair dangerously by swaying from side to side in it, raised her cracked old voice still higher, and prodded the unfortunate Bloxham with greater determination than before.
‘What the—oh, it’s you, Mrs Puddequet,’ said the inspector, swinging round. ‘What is it, ma’am?’
‘What are those iron poles, inspector?’
‘Witnesses to an attempt at murder, ma’am.’
‘Don’t you be facetious at my expense, young man!’ screamed old Mrs Puddequet.
‘Well,’ retorted the inspector, ‘from the plan of these grounds, which Mr Cowes was kind enough to find in the library and hand to me, and from what I myself remember, I see that where those bars stand should be the doorway of the hut. The doors of all these huts, ma’am, open outwards. Do I begin to make myself clear?’
‘Attendant, take me in!’ cried Great-aunt Puddequet to Joseph Herring, who had abandoned the wheelbarrow and was now an interested spectator of the unusual scene.
‘Very good, mam.’
‘And, attendant!’
‘Yes, mam?’
‘Return and assist the police in the execution of their duty.’
‘Very good, mam.’
‘You understand me, attendant?’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes, mam.’
‘And otherwise?’
‘No, mam.’
‘Tell the police,’ said Great-aunt Puddequet with great distinctness, ‘that any article of value they may recover from the effects of the fire is my property.’
Chapter Eleven
What Happened to Anthony?
THE INSPECTOR DREW the sergeant out of earshot of the spectators and spoke quietly.
‘Can’t see that there’s anything more to be gained here. I reckon the whole thing’s a plant.’
‘Plant, sir?’
‘Yes. In spite of those two iron bars. They’ve never been in a fire! Somebody sneaked out early and put ’em in position. Silly practical joke, I consider. Done to put the wind up young Yeomond, that’s all. Go and have another look at ’em for yourself. Fingerprints on them, I expect, and so we sh
all soon know who’s the Bright Young Thing of the establishment. I know who I’ve fixed on.’
The sergeant grinned.
‘Mr Brown-Jenkins, sir?’
The inspector made no attempt to confirm or to deny this, and the rest of the party, much intrigued by the official conclave, gravitated towards the two policemen, who, after cautioning them to touch nothing and to return immediately to their several occupations so that footprints might not be confused, set off towards the house, where they asked for an interview with Mrs Puddequet and her adopted grandson. While they were waiting for the old lady to appear, Bloxham leaned out of the drawing-room window and called to the policeman below:
‘Go and get Copple, and the two of you peg a rope round that burnt-out hut. That’ll remind people not to go poking round there.’
He drew in his head and grinned.
‘Nothing like looking thorough in your methods,’ he said. ‘But, seriously—’
He was interrupted by the entrance of Great-aunt Puddequet in her bathchair. She was propelled this time by Malpas Yeomond. The inspector regarded them gravely, and then said:
‘Mrs Puddequet, you were right. But the person who played such a foolish and expensive practical joke must be discovered and brought to book. I’ve my hands full already here. I can’t waste my time looking for mare’s nests. I am not going to ask whether you know the name of the joker. I am merely going to ask permission to go into your kitchen and interview the cook.’
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