The Coldstone

by Patricia Wentworth

  Lane was caught off his guard. His chair went back with a grate. He got up and stood there, well back in the shadow.

  “Sir Jervis—” he began, and then stopped.

  Anthony prompted him.

  “Sir Jervis didn’t like people to talk about it. Was that what you were going to say?”

  “Yes, sir.” Lane was relieved and eager.

  “Yes. But why? It’s no use, Lane—you might as well tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell—not that I know about, sir.” He sounded very unhappy.

  “Well, let’s take it that you don’t know anything, but you’ve heard something. I’m asking you what you’ve heard about the Stones.”

  “I can’t say, sir.”

  “Hang it all, what’s the good of saying you can’t say? It’s senseless, man! I don’t ask you to vouch for anything—I only want to know what’s said. There are the Stones, and a field you can’t get into. The hay isn’t cut there. Nobody ’ll talk about them. People who’ve lived here all their lives have never walked a quarter of a mile to see them. The Miss Colstones say there are superstitions about them. Well now, Lane, I’m asking you straight out, as an old family servant, to tell me what those superstitions are. You’ve been here forty years, and you can’t pretend you don’t know.”

  Lane made a curious unintelligible sound of protest. Then, as Anthony moved, he said in a low, hesitating voice.

  “Sir—sir—I’d rather not. I—I don’t know anything.”

  “I’m asking you what is said.”

  Lane looked over his shoulder. The room was not so dark but that it held darker shadows. He took a step towards the lighted circle.

  “Ask Mrs. Bowyer, sir—don’t ask me. She knows a deal more about the Stones than anyone else do. Her great-grandfather he saw things with his very own eyes—” He broke off in some agitation.

  “What did he see?” said Anthony, laughing.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “But Mrs. Bowyer knows?”

  “That’s what folks say. And if she don’t know, there’s nobody that does. I can’t say more than that.”

  He came forward as he said the last words, took up the coffee tray, and went out, moving a little more quickly than usual.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ford St. Mary went to bed early; by the time the church clock struck eleven there was not, as a rule, anyone awake to hear it. On this particular night two people heard the last stroke die away in the soft, warm dark. The silence came back again, flowing in softly, dreamily, drowsily.

  Susan yawned and thought that she had better get into bed. She had put out her light more than half an hour ago and set the casement window wide. There was no breeze, only a faint stirring of the clear dark air. She sat on the wide window ledge in her nightgown, a surprisingly modern affair for the girl who had worn an old-fashioned blue print frock and sun-bonnet that afternoon. The nightgown was also blue; but it had pink ribbon shoulder-straps and no sleeves, and it showed as much of Susan’s very pretty neck and shoulders as if she had been going to a ball in Queen Victoria’s day’. It was made of something silky and diaphanous.

  Susan reached out her bare arms and stretched. Then she got up and left the window with reluctance. It was really awfully hot, and the heavy old-fashioned bed was over on the other side of the room. She sat down on the edge of it and wished that she could lift the roof off. Then she laughed. Gran in the next room was sleeping peacefully under two blankets and an eiderdown, with her pet patchwork quilt neatly folded at the foot of the bed!

  “Marvellous old dear!” said Susan, and stretched again. “Well, here goes!”

  There was only a sheet on her own bed. She folded it back, piled up the three pillows—which Gran considered so destructive to the figure—and settled herself against them. “A flat bed makes a flat back.” She could just hear Gran quoting that.

  She began to think about Stonegate, and Anthony Colstone, and the man who had looked through the hedge. If Anthony hadn’t walked through the fields with her, she would have gone back and had a look at the man who had been watching him. She wondered if she had given herself away. It couldn’t have been Garry; and if it were Garry, was it possible to do a more senseless thing than to give the whole show away to Anthony Colstone? It couldn’t have been Garry, because Garry was in Ireland. No, Garry had said he was going to Ireland. But, being Garry, that might quite easily mean that he hadn’t the slightest intention of going there.

  She thought of Garry with an exasperation that became rather blurred, rather uncertain. The pillows were comfortable. She began to slip into the shallow waters that lie on the edge of sleep. A faint dream of Garry hovered—Garry frowning; Garry smiling; Garry whistling.

  She woke with a start, bewildered because part of the dream seemed to have been left behind, caught in the darkness. She sat bolt upright and listened with startled ears. Someone was whistling under the window. Her heart gave a great thump. It was Garry. No, it couldn’t be Garry—Garry was in her dream. Her heart thumped again. It was Garry. There wasn’t anyone else in all the world who would be whistling Garryowen under her window at this ridiculous hour. She went hot with rage and bounded out of bed.

  With a knee on the window-seat she leaned out and tried to pierce the darkness. There was someone there, but it might have been anyone—only it wasn’t; it was Garry.

  Susan said “Ssh!” in a furious whisper, and hoped ardently that Mrs. Smithers on the one side, and the entire household at the Ladies’ House on the other, were sleeping the sleep of the pre-fresh-air period behind hermetically sealed windows.

  The whistling stopped. A voice said “Susan” in a melting whisper—Garry’s voice.

  “Go away at once!” said Susan in a fierce undertone. Then she added, “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “Come down!” said Garry.

  Susan gritted her teeth with rage. She would have to go down, because if she didn’t, he would certainly say whatever he wanted to say standing in Gran’s front garden. She only trusted that he wasn’t standing on the lobelias, or the geraniums, or anything that was going to show a compromising foot-print. Garry was capable of anything.

  She said “All right” in a tone as near inaudibility as she could compass, tiptoed to her trunk, rummaged out a black chiffon frock, and hitching up her nightgown, slipped the frock over it and groped for shoes and stockings. If the stairs creaked, all would be over; or the bolt—bolts have a fiendish way of creaking.

  She came down, lightly, lightly, and nothing stirred. The bolt ran smoothly back, the door let her through. And there was Garry with his heel on a broken geranium.

  Susan took him by the arm and pinched really hard.

  “Ssh!” Her lips were at his ear. “We can’t talk here—I shan’t have a rag of character. Follow me! I’ll go first.”

  She was out of the gate and over the street in a flash. Under the Stonegate pillars the shadow was as black as ink. She stared out of it at the dark houses opposite, all asleep, all close and still and dreaming. “I bet mine’s the only open window of the lot,” she said to herself.

  And then Garry’s hand touched her, groping.

  She said, “Not here!” and slipped along in the shadow until they were clear of the houses and the road turned uphill.

  Where the stile led into Anthony Colstone’s fields she stopped.

  “Now what on earth does this mean, Garry?” she said.

  Garry’s voice sounded sulky.

  “Is that what you’re asking me?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Then there are two of us, for it’s what I’ve come here to ask you.”

  Susan laughed, not out loud but in her own self, because that was Garry all over—attack’s the best defence. Yes, that was Garry. She said,

  “That’s no good. I’m doing the asking, and you’ve got to explain. If anyone saw me slip out just now, I’m done for as far as Ford St. Mary’s concerned. This isn’t London, you know.”r />
  “What are you doing here?” said Garry.

  “Visiting Gran.”

  “Again?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why? Why? I want to know why.”

  Susan did not answer. She took him by the arm and closed her hand hard.

  “What are you doing here, Garry? What were you doing in that field this afternoon? And why were you watching Anthony Colstone?”

  He wrenched his arm away.

  “Did he tell you I was watching him?”

  Susan laughed again.

  “Did you think he was blind? He isn’t, you know. He can see across a field. He saw you watching him—at least I suppose you were watching him.”

  “What did he tell you?” said Garry fiercely.

  Susan answered him lightly. The lightness was like something moving over deep water.

  “He told me there was a man in the hedge—an awfully odd sort of fellow. He said you stared. He said, my dear Garry, that you looked as if you would like to do him in. What it is to have an expressive face!”

  It was Garry’s turn to take hold of her. He caught her roughly by the shoulder, and she said,

  “Don’t do that!”

  “Do him in? Yes—if he asks for it. What were you doing talking to him at all?”

  “Garry, let go of me!” said Susan in a steady whisper.

  “I will not. You are to tell me what you were doing up by the Coldstone Ring talking to Anthony Colstone.”

  “Garry, if you don’t let go of me—” She paused.

  “Well?”

  “I was just thinking,” said Susan.

  “Thinking?”

  “What you’d like least.”

  “And have you made up your mind?”

  “Yes—I think I shall scream and give your description to the police. You wouldn’t like that a bit—would you?”

  He laughed and let go of her.

  “I’d rather finish our talk first.”

  “There isn’t going to be any talk, my dear, unless you tell me what you’re doing here—”

  “And have you tell Anthony Colstone—”

  “Don’t be silly, Garry!”

  “Will you swear you won’t tell him?”

  Susan said, “No,” and then, “What are you up to? I won’t make any promises, but you’d better tell me for your own sake. What are you doing here?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation.

  “I’m on my own business—not that it mightn’t be your business too if it came off. Can I trust you?”

  “You ought to know, Garry.”

  He flung out an arm as if to clasp her, but she stepped back.

  “Garry—it’s not that stupid business of the Sikh treasure?”

  “And why is it stupid?”

  “You know your great-grandfather was off his head.”

  “I do not.”

  “But, Garry, your Aunt Emma always said the whole thing was a delusion. He had sunstroke, and imagined he’d been cheated out of a fortune.”

  Susan felt rather bewildered. She remembered old Major O’Connell, very dried up, very old, always talking; and Miss O’Connell, changing the subject whenever it came round to India or the Mutiny.

  “Who said he imagined it?”

  “Your Aunt Emma.”

  “And where did she get it from? From Sir Jervis Colstone—Sir Jervis who cheated him. It’s so easy to say that a man who’s had sunstroke doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That’s what Sir Jervis said—and everyone believed him. I’ve read his letters, and they make me sick. Damn hypocritical denials, full of soft sawder—didn’t know what his ‘dear O’Connell’ was driving at—begged him not to excite himself, and trusted he’d soon be restored to health. And my grandfather had written across the signature, ‘A black liar’ on one letter, and ‘Judas’ on the other.”

  “It sounds mad, Garry,” said Susan frankly.

  “Well, and wouldn’t you be mad if you’d been cheated like that by your best friend?”

  Susan shrugged her shoulders.

  “If you’re looking for your great-grandfather’s treasure, you’re just wasting your time, for I don’t believe it ever had any existence, except in his dreams.”

  Garry came quite close to her.

  “Then why wouldn’t Sir Jervis let anyone go near the Coldstone Ring?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do then. It’s because the treasure’s buried there.”

  “Garry, how ridiculous! It’s not that at all. There’s some old superstition. Gran knows about it.”

  “Village gossip! You’re not going to tell me Sir Jervis would believe it? It suited him well enough because it covered up what he’d been doing.”

  “But good gracious, Garry, if he had buried the treasure, why should he leave it there?”

  “My great-grandfather was alive till ten years ago. I say Sir Jervis didn’t dare dig the stuff up until his ‘dear O’Connell’ was dead, but by that time he was too old. He couldn’t do it himself, and he hadn’t got anyone he could trust. And if he couldn’t have it himself, he didn’t want anyone else to have it, so he tried to get his heir to promise not to shift the Stones.”

  “The Stones?” said Susan. A little cold shiver went over her.

  “The treasure’s there,” said Garry with cold finality.

  Susan shivered again. She hated the whole thing—the Stones, the treasure, the old mad O’Connell—and Garry. No, she couldn’t quite hate Garry. But she wished most desperately that she was in bed and asleep. As a first step towards getting there, she smothered a yawn and said,

  “Is that all?”

  And in a moment Garry was off into one of his rages. It was like something blowing up, and it always frightened her, deep down under her self-control. If there had been any light, she would have seen his face quite, quite colourless, lips drawn back from the pointed, irregular teeth, eyes frightfully black, a ring of white showing all round the iris. Gran had been right when she said “Keep clear of the black.” But she didn’t know Garry. Susan did; and she was frightened for herself, and for him, and for Anthony Colstone.

  “All?” said Garry. His voice was quite soft. He began to pour out a medley of frightful words very slowly and deliberately. It wouldn’t have been nearly so frightening if he had shouted. He never shouted when he was angry; he said blood curdling things softly, slowly, deliberately, with pauses between the words as if he were dwelling on them.

  Just when Susan felt as if she were really going to scream, he stopped.

  “No, it isn’t all,” he said in his usual voice—“not quite. Sir Jervis had a nurse when he was ill—and Sir Jervis talked.”

  Susan stood quite still. All this seemed very unbelievable. Thin sort of stuff to be keeping one out of one’s bed at midnight. She was so tired that she didn’t care how much treasure was buried in the Coldstone Ring, or anywhere else. Garry’s rages were very depleting. She wanted to get away and shut herself up in her safe dark room and go to sleep. She didn’t believe a single word about old Major O’Connell and the treasure. She wondered whether Garry really believed it either. It didn’t seem possible to believe a story like that.

  “I ran across the nurse in Wrane.” There was a note of triumph in Garry’s tone. “Sir Jervis talked—and she told me what he said.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘It’s safe. No one will ever find it.’ He was talking in his sleep, you know, the night before he died. Then he woke with a start, and said ‘Did I say anything?’ And the nurse told him what he’d said, and he said, ‘So it is—quite safe. And nobody will find it, because nobody knows it’s there.’ And presently he went to sleep again, and when he was asleep he talked some more.”

  There was silence—warm, drowsy silence.

  “Is that all?”

  “It’s all I’m going to tell you,” said Garry.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “All right,” said Susan. Then she said, “Goodnig
ht, Garry,” and ran past him down the hill.

  She heard him swear under his breath, and she heard him follow. She wondered if she could run faster than he could, and a little breath of excitement just touched her and went past. She took hold of herself and stood quite still, and he came up with a rush and caught her round the waist.

  “You’re not going like that!”

  “I was.”

  “You can’t now.” His arm tightened.

  “I shall have more luck than I deserve if I can get back without being seen. By the bye, where are you getting back to?”

  “Wrane. I’ve got a motor bike. There’s no hurry. Kiss me, Susan.”

  Susan heaved a weary sigh.

  “My good Garry, I don’t want to be made love to—I want to go to sleep.”

  Garry held her closer.

  “Susan!”

  “I’m dead sleepy.”

  “Bored with me, I suppose.”

  “Frightfully bored with you.”

  “If I thought you meant that—”

  “I do mean it.”

  “I’d—”

  “Well, my dear?”

  The movement with which he let go of her was so violent that she nearly lost her balance. She said,

  “Really, Garry!”

  “Sometimes I think I could kill you,” said Garry.

  “Think again!” said Susan. Then she laughed. “You’re being most frightfully silly. Goodnight.”

  This time she did not make the mistake of running. She walked away briskly and lightly, and after a moment’s pause she heard him go running back up the hill. She came into the warm hush of the village street and looked up at the blank windows again. Not a glimmer, not a sound. Old houses, dreaming old, confused dreams of all the things that had ever happened in them. Old drowsy houses, slipping back into the past out of which they had come.

  She lifted the latch of the garden gate, skirted the lavender bush, slipped into the dark living-room, and slid the bolt. She couldn’t see anything at all, it was so dark. “Black as the inside of an oven,” Gran would say.

  She felt her way to the stairs and went slowly, slowly up, each step solid under her foot without a creak, and the heavy rail smooth as glass under her hand. Hundreds of years of polish had made it as smooth as that—just the slipping of hands going up and down for three hundred years.