"Your wife?" asked Mr. Cullen, with that refreshing frankness. In the Islands it would have taken five minutes' conversation to have elicited that information from him.
"No. That's Lady Kentallen."
"Lady? A title?"
"Yes," Grant said, busy with the stove. "She is Viscountess Kentallen."
Mr. Cullen considered this in silence for a little.
"I suppose that's a sort of marked-down Countess."
"No. On the contrary. A very superior kind. Practically a Marchioness. Look, Mr. Cullen, let's postpone this matter of your friend for a little. It's a matter that interests me more than I can say, but—"
"Yes, of course. I'll go. When can I talk to you again about it?"
"Of course you will not go! You'll stay and have some food with us."
"You mean you want me to meet this Marchioness, this —what-you-may-call-it, Viscountess?"
"Why not? She is a very nice person to meet. One of the nicest persons I know."
"Yes?" Mr. Cullen looked with interest at the approaching Zoë. "She's certainly very nice to look at. I didn't know they come like that. Somehow I imagined all aristocrats had beaky noses."
"Specially provided for looking down, I take it."
"Something like that."
"I don't know how far back in English history one would have to go to find an aristocratic nose that was looked down. I doubt if you'd find one at all. The only place to find a looked-down nose is in the suburbs. In what is known as lower-middle-class circles."
Mr. Cullen looked puzzled. "But the aristocrats keep themselves to themselves and look down on the rest, don't they?"
"It has never been possible in England for any class to keep themselves to themselves, as you call it. They have been intermarrying at all levels for two thousand years. There never have been separate and distinct classes—or an aristocratic class at all in the sense that you mean it."
"I suppose nowadays things are evening up," Mr. Cullen suggested, faintly unbelieving.
"Oh, no. It has always been a fluid thing. Even our Royalty. Elizabeth the First was the grand-daughter of a Lord Mayor. And you'll find that Royalty's personal friends have no titles at all: I mean the people who are on calling-terms at Buckingham Palace. Whereas the bold bad baron who sits next you in an expensive restaurant probably started life as a platelayer on the railway. There is no keeping oneself to oneself in England, as far as class goes. It can't be done. It can only be done by Mrs. Jones who sniffs at her neighbour Mrs. Smith because Mr. Jones makes two pounds a week more than Mr. Smith."
He turned from the puzzled American to greet Zoë.
"I'm truly sorry about the stove. I'm afraid I got it going too late to be ready. We were having a very interesting conversation. This is Mr. Cullen, who flies freight for Oriental Commercial Airlines."
Zoë shook hands, and asked him what kind of plane he flew.
From the tone of his voice when he told her, Grant deduced that Mr. Cullen thought that Zoë was merely taking a condescending interest. Condescension was what he would expect from an "aristocrat."
"They're very heavy in hand, aren't they?" Zoë remarked sympathetically. "My brother used to fly one when he was on the Australia run. He was always cursing it." She began to open the packets of food. "But now that he works in an office in Sydney he has a little runabout of his own. A Beamish Eight. A lovely thing. I used to fly it when he first bought it, before he took it to Australia. David—my husband—and I used to dream of having one too, but we could never afford it."
"But a Beamish Eight costs only four hundred," Mr. Cullen blurted.
Zoë licked her fingers, sticky from a leaking apple tart, and said, "Yes, I know, but we never had four hundred to spare."
Mr. Cullen, feeling himself being washed out to sea, sought some terra firma.
"I oughtn't to be eating your food this way," he said. "They'll have plenty for me back at the hotel. I really ought to go back."
"Oh, don't go," Zoë said with a simplicity so genuine that it penetrated even Mr. Cullen's defences. "There is enough for a platoon."
So to Grant's pleasure in more ways than one, Mr. Cullen stayed. And Zoë, unaware that she was providing the United States with a revised view of the genus English Aristocrat, ate like a hungry schoolboy and talked in her gentle voice to the stranger as if she had known him all her life. By the apple-tart stage, Mr. Cullen had ceased to be on his guard. By the time that they were handing round the chocolates that Laura had included, he had surrendered unconditionally.
They sat together in the spring sunshine, full-fed and content. Zoë lying back against the grassy bank with her feet crossed and her hands behind her head, her eyes closed against the sun; Grant with his mind busy with B Seven, and the material that Tad Cullen had brought him; Mr. Cullen himself perched on a rock looking down the river to the green civilised strath where the moors ended and the fields began.
"Ifs a fine little country, this," he said. "I like it. If you ever decide to fight for your freedom, count me in."
"Freedom?" said Zoë, opening her eyes. "Freedom from whom or what?"
"From England, of course."
Zoë looked helpless, but Grant began to laugh. "I think you must have been talking to a little black man in a kilt," he said.
"He had a kilt, yes, but he wasn't coloured," Mr. Cullen said.
"No, I meant black-haired. You've been talking to Archie Brown."
"Who is Archie Brown?" asked Zoë.
"He is the self-appointed saviour of Gaeldom, and our future Sovereign, Commissar, President, or what have you, when Scotland has freed herself from the murderous burden of the English yoke."
"Oh, yes, that man," Zoë, said mildly, identifying Archie in her mind. "He is a little off his head, isn't he? Does he live around here?"
"He is staying at the hotel at Moymore, I understand. He has been doing missionary work on Mr. Cullen, it seems."
"Well," Mr. Cullen grinned a little sheepishly, "I did just wonder if he wasn't over-stating things a bit. I've met some Scots in my time and they didn't seem to me to be the kind of people to put up with the treatment Mr. Brown was describing. Indeed, if you'll forgive me, Mr. Grant, they always seemed to me the kind of people to get the best of whatever bargain was going."
"Did you ever hear the Union better described?" Grant said to Zoë.
"I never knew anything about the Union," Zoë said comfortably, "except that it took place in 1707."
"Was there a battle, then?" Mr. Cullen asked.
"No," Grant said. "Scotland stepped thankfully on to England's band-wagon, and fell heir to all the benefits. Colonies, Shakespeare, soap, solvency, and so forth."
"I hope Mr. Brown doesn't go lecture-touring in the States," Zoë said, half asleep.
"He will," Grant said. "He will. All vociferous minorities go lecture-touring in the States."
"It will give them very wrong ideas, won't it?" Zoë said mildly. Grant thought with what a blistering phrase Laura would have expressed the same idea. "They have the oddest ideas. When David and 1 were there, the year before he was killed, we were always being asked why we didn't stop taxing Canada. When we said we had never taxed Canada they just looked at us as if we were telling lies. Not very good lies, either."
From Mr. Cullen's expression Grant deduced that he too had had "odd" ideas about Canadian taxation, but Zoë's eyes were closed. Grant wondered if Mr. Cullen realised that Zoë was quite unaware that he was an American; that it had not occurred to her to consider his accent, his nationality, his clothes or any personal thing about him. She had accepted him as he stood, as a person. He was just a flyer, like her brother; someone who had turned up in time to share their picnic and who was pleasant and interesting to talk to. It would not occur to her to pigeonhole him, to put him in any special category. If she was conscious at all of his narrow as she no doubt took him for a North-countryman.
He looked at her, half asleep there in the sun, and thought how beautiful sh
e was. He looked across at Mr. Cullen and saw that he too was looking at Zoë Kentallen and thinking how beautiful she was. Their glances met and ran away from each other.
Bu Grant, who last night could imagine no greater felicity than to sit and look at Zoë Kentallen, was conscious now of a faint impatience with her, and this so shocked him that he took it out, in his self-analytical way, to examine it. What flaw could there be in this divinity? What imperfection in this princess from a fairytale?
"You know very well what's wrong," said that irreverent voice in him. "You want her to get the hell out of here so that you can find out about B Seven."
And for once he did not try to contradict the voice. He did in brutal fact wish that Zoë would "get the hell out of here." The Zoë whose very presence had made magic of yesterday afternoon was now an encumbrance. Tiny prickles of boredom chased each other up and down his spine. Lovely, simple, heavenly Zoë, do get a move on. Creature of delight and princess of my dreams, go away.
He was rehearsing phrases for taking his own departure, when she gave the abrupt half-sigh half-yawn of a child and said, "Well, there is a seven-pounder in the Cuddy Pool that must be finding life dull without me." And with her usual lack of fuss or chat she took her things and departed into the spring afternoon.
Mr. Cullen looked after her approvingly, and Grant waited for comment. But it seemed that Mr. Cullen too had been waiting for the departure of his "marked-down Countess." He watched her out of earshot and then said immediately:
"Mr. Grant, why did you ask me if I had a photograph of Bill? Docs that mean that you think you know him?"
"No. No. But it would eliminate people who could not be BUI."
"Oh. Yes. Well, I haven't one in my pocket but I have one in my grip at the hotel. It isn't a very good one, but it would give you the general idea. Could I bring it to you some time?"
"No. I'll walk down to Moymore with you now."
"You will? You're certainly very kind, Mr. Grant. You think you've got a line on this thing? You haven't told me what those words were. That quotation or whatever it was. That's really what I came to ask you. What the talking-beasts thing was all about. If it was a place he was interested in, you see, he might have gone there, and I could go there too and cross his trail that way."
"You're very fond of this Bill, aren't you?"
"Well, we've been together quite a time, and though we're opposites in most ways we get along fine. Just fine. I wouldn't like anything to happen to BUI."
Grant changed the conversation and asked about Tad Cullen's own life. And while they walked down the glen to Moymore, he heard about the clean small town back in the States, and what a dull place it seemed to a boy who could fly, and how wonderful the East had seemed in the distance and how unexciting close up.
"Just Main Street with smells," Mr. Cullen said.
"What did you do in Paris during your long wait for Bill to turn up?"
"Oh, I helled around some. It wasn't much fun without Bill. I met a couple of fellows I'd known in India, and we went places together, but I was impatient all the time for Bill to be there. I let them go, after a bit, and went to look at some of the places in the tourist folders. Some of those old places are pretty nice. There was one place built right over the water—a castle, I mean—on stone arches, so that the river flowed underneath. That was fine. It would have done very well for the Countess. Is that the kind of place she lives in?"
"No," Grant said, thinking of the difference between Chenonceaux and Kentallen. "She lives in a grim flat grey house with tiny windows and poky rooms and narrow stairs and a front door as welcoming as the exit of a laundry chute. It has two little turrets on the fourth-storey level, next the roof, and in Scotland that makes it a castle."
"Sounds like a prison. Why does she stay?"
"A prison! No prison committee would consider it for a moment; questions would be asked in the House immediately about its lack of light, heating, sanitary conveniences, colour, beauty, space, and what not. She stays because she loves the place. I doubt if she can stay much longer, however. Death duties have been so heavy that she will have to sell."
"But will anyone buy it?"
"Not to live in. But some speculator will buy it, and cut down the woods. The lead on the roof would probably fetch something; and they'd have to take the roof off anyhow to avoid paying tax on the house."
"Hah! Dust-bowl stuff," remarked Mr. Cullen. "It hasn't a moat, by any chance?"
"No. Why?"
"I must see a moat before I go back to OCAL." And then, after a pause, "I'm really very worried about Bill, Mr. Grant."
"Yes, it is certainly very odd."
'That was nice of you." Mr. Cullen said unexpectedly.
"What was?"
"Not to say, 'Don't you worry, he'll turn up all right!' I can hardly keep my hands off people who say, 'Don't you worry, he'll turn up.' I could strangle them."
Moymore Hotel was a tiny version of Kentallen, without the turrets. But it was whitewashed and cheerful, and the trees behind it were coming into leaf. In the little flagged entrance-hall Mr. Cullen hesitated.
"In Britain 1 notice people don't ask you up to their hotel bedroom. Would you like to wait in the sitting-room, perhaps?"
"Oh, no; I'll come up. I don't think we have any feeling about hotel bedrooms. It is probably just that our hotel sitting-rooms are so near our bedrooms that there is no need to go up, and so we don't suggest it. When a public lounge is a day's journey from your own room, it is easier to take a guest with you, I suppose. That way you are at least in the same hemisphere."
Mr. Cullen had a front room, looking across the road to the fields and the river and the hills beyond. With his professional eye Grant noticed the log fire ready-laid in the hearth and the daffodils in the window: Moymore had standards. With his personal mind he was concerned for this Tad Cullen, who had interrupted his leave and come to the wilds of Caledonia to find the friend who meant so much to him. A foreboding that he could not shake off had grown in him with every step of the way to Moymore, and now it filled him to the point of nausea.
The young man took a letter-case from his travelling-bag and opened it on the dressing-table. It contained practically everything but the wherewithal for writing letters. Among the mess of papers, maps, travel folders, and what not, there were two leather articles: an address-book and a pocket-book. From the pocket-book he took some photographs and riffled through the feminine smiles until he found what he was looking for.
"Here it is. I'm afraid it isn't a very good one. It's just a snapshot, you see. It was taken when a crowd of us were at the beach."
Grant took the proffered piece of paper, almost reluctantly.
"That's—" Tad Cullen was beginning, lifting his arm to point.
"No, wait!" Grant said, stopping him. "Let me see if I— if I recognise anyone."
There were perhaps a dozen young men in the photograph, which had been taken on the verandah of some beach-house. They were clustered round the steps and draped over the rickety wooden railing in various stages of déshabillé. Grant swept a swift glance over their laughing faces and was conscious of a great relief. There was no one there that he had ever—
And then he saw the man on the bottom step.
He was sitting with his feet pushed away from him into the sand, his eyes screwed up against the sun and his chin tilted back a little as if he had been in the act of turning to say something to the men behind. It was just so that his head had been tilted back against the pillow in Compartment B Seven on the morning of the 4th of March.
"Well?"
"Is that your friend?" Grant said, pointing to the man on the bottom step.
"Yes, that's Bill. How did you know? Have you met him somewhere, then?"
"I—I'm inclined to think that I have. But of course, on that photograph, I could hardly swear to it."
"I don't want you to do any swearing. Just give me a general weather report. Just tell me roughly when and where you saw him
and I'll track him down, don't you be in any doubt about it. Do you know where you met him? I mean, do you remember?"
"Oh, yes. I remember. I saw him in a compartment—a sleeping-berth compartment—of the London mail when it was running into Scoone early in the morning of the 4th of March. That was the train I came north on."
"You mean Bill came here! To Scotland? What for?"
"I don't know."
"Didn't he tell you? Did you talk to him?"
"No. I couldn't."
Why not?"
Grant put out his hand and pushed his companion gently backwards so that he sat down in the chair that was behind him.
"I couldn't because he was no longer alive."
There was a short silence.
"I'm truly sorry, Cullen. I wish I could pretend to you that it might not be Bill, but short of going into a witness-box on oath I am prepared to back my belief that it is."
After another little silence Cullen said: "Why was he dead? What happened to him?"
"He had had a fair load of whiskey and he fell backwards against the solid porcelain wash-basin. It fractured his skull."
"Who said all this?"
"That was the finding of the coroner's court. In London."
"In London? Why in London?"
"Because he had died, according to the post-mortem, very shortly after leaving Euston. And by English law, a sudden death is investigated by a coroner and a jury."
"But all that's just—just supposition," Cullen said, beginning to come alive and be angry. "If he was alone, how can anyone tell what happened to him?"
"Because the English police are the most painstaking creatures as well as the most suspicious."
"Police? There were police in on this thing?"
"Oh, assuredly. The police do the investigating and report in public to the coroner and his jury. In this case there had been the most exhaustive examination and tests. They knew in the end almost to a mouthful how much neat whisky he had drunk, and at what intervals before his—his death."
"And that about his falling backwards—how could they know that?"
The Singing Sands Page 12
