Sweet Danger Page 7

  ‘I didn’t think I’d go myself,’ Mr Campion continued. ‘It was rather like joining the crowd round an accident, I felt. By the way, I hope your doctor is not too rustic. Not the cobbler in his spare time, or anything like that?’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh no. Old Galley’s all right, really.’

  She stood fidgeting in the middle of the hall, looking absurdly young.

  Something prompted Mr Campion to take a shot in the dark.

  ‘I must get back to Lugg,’ he said. ‘That’s my man. He’s getting very temperamental. He went for a walk on the heath last night and came back with a ridiculous story about finding a corpse on the heath.’

  He stopped abruptly. The girl was looking at him with a mixture of alarm and defiance in her eyes.

  ‘Don’t you think it would be nice,’ she said in a tone which warned him not to continue as clearly as if she had said the words, ‘Don’t you think it would be nice if we went to see the mill?’

  ‘Splendid idea,’ said Mr Campion affably.

  His tone and expression were friendly, but his pale eyes behind his spectacles were keen and searching, and it had not escaped him that Amanda’s cheeks were very white and her lips were trembling.

  CHAPTER VI

  Tongues in Trees

  ‘EASE HER A bit! Ease her! Now hang on or she’ll go in the river.’

  Amanda, breathless and crimson with exertion, clung to the archaic steering arm of the old brougham.

  Mr Campion, who was pushing the cumbersome vehicle up the dangerous slope to the coach-house of the mill, did as he was told.

  ‘If only Scatty was a proper chauffeur,’ Amanda observed, as they tucked this great-great-grandmother of electric transport into an old striped-canvas shroud, ‘If only Scatty was a proper chauffeur he could do all this shoving.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Campion brightly. ‘Or if he was a horse.’

  Amanda regarded him coldly. ‘You admitted the car looked very well outside the house,’ she said with dignity. ‘You’re probably one of those people like Hal who don’t believe in appearances. But I do. Appearances matter an awful lot.’

  ‘Oh, rather,’ said Mr Campion. ‘I knew a man once who carried it to excess, though. His name was Gosling, you see, so he always dressed in grey and yellow, and occasionally wore a great false beak. People remembered his name, of course. But his wife didn’t like it. Of course, he had perfectly ordinary children – not eggs – and that was a blow to him. And finally he moved into a wooden house with just slats in front instead of windows, and you opened the front door with a pulley on the roof. It had a natty little letter box on the front gate with “The Coop” painted on it. Soon after, his wife left him and the Borough Council stepped in. But I see you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ said Amanda. ‘I was his wife. Come and see the mill.’

  The shadows of the leaves made dancing grey patterns on the white walls, the water was very clear, and the air was warm and sunny, as they came across the yard and turned into the cool, slightly musty-smelling building.

  ‘There isn’t much to see up here,’ said Amanda, ‘except my dynamo, which is rather fun. That’s our principal possession. Then there’s Mary’s loom. She makes homespun scarves and things. They go to a shop in London. She doesn’t get much for them, but they’re very pretty. That’s all there is except the oak, and that’s Hal’s.’

  ‘The oak?’ enquired Mr Campion.

  She nodded. ‘It’s right up in the mill tower. It isn’t much to see, but it’s the only Pontisbright heirloom we’ve got. It isn’t really an heirloom at all, because I suppose we stole it. But nobody wanted it except us.’

  She paused, and stood leaning against one of the pillars which supported the crazy floor of the apartment above. An old sack-shoot trap stood open, and through it was a vivid picture of green meadows, overblown trees, and a little winding stream which flowed gently on to the crimson and yellow of a distant osier bed.

  She made such a fantastic figure in her tight brown jersey and red-and-yellow kerchief that Campion, regarding her owlisly behind his spectacles, wondered if the whole adventure were quite real.

  He sat down on a pile of sacks, and the girl’s next remark was in keeping with his mood.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘Hal’s the proper Earl of Pontisbright. That makes it all the more fun, don’t you think?’

  Mr Campion blinked. ‘It all depends what you mean by fun,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘Oh, well – the missing earl and all that sort of thing. You know; the wicked great-grandmother, the babe in the snow, and justice gone astray. It’s so nice when it’s true. Shall I tell you about it?’

  It was evident to him that the query was superfluous. Amanda, always informative, was in a chatty mood.

  ‘Well,’ she said before he could assent, ‘the last proper Earl of Pontisbright – that is, the last man who lived at the Hall – had two sons; a young one called Giles and an older one called Hal. Well, Giles went off to America and was never heard of again until Aunt Hatt turned up. She’s his granddaughter. But the elder son stayed on with his father and mother, who was an absolute terror called Josephine, until he was about twenty-five, when he fell in love with an absolutely beautiful girl called Mary Fitton, and they got engaged.

  ‘Mary Fitton lived over at Sweethearting with her father, who was just a knight.’

  She paused. ‘You don’t look very intelligent,’ she said. ‘Are you taking it all in?’

  ‘Every word,’ said Mr Campion truthfully. ‘Aunt Hatt’s grandfather’s eldest brother was engaged to Mary Fitton, whose father was just a knight. I suppose he had trouble with his parents? A battle of snobs in high life, as it were.’

  ‘Oh, no. Only with great-great-grandmother Josephine,’ said Amanda quickly. ‘His father was rather keen on the marriage, and, anyway, they did get properly engaged. And then, of course, the Crimea happened, and one day Hal rode over to tell Mary that he’d got to go off to the war next morning. And so he said could they get married at once? And she said Yes. And so they went to the clergyman and persuaded him to do them. And it wasn’t very legal, but he did. Then Hal and his father both went to the war and got killed, and the Countess Josephine had the nerve to say that Hal and Mary hadn’t been married at all, and so the little Hal wouldn’t be the heir when he arrived. And she bribed or frightened the parson, who must have been an awful fool, anyhow, into saying there hadn’t been any marriage, and so the title lapsed, and the Countess Josephine sold up everything and had the house pulled down. Still clear?’ she demanded, somewhat breathlessly.

  ‘Yes,’ said the valiant Mr Campion. ‘Can I tell you the story of my life after this?’

  Amanda ignored him and went on: ‘Mary Fitton got into trouble from her relations, but the little Hal, although he was poor, was an awfully fierce sort of person, and clearly a Pontisbright. He went off to London and made some money and got married, and his son was called Hal, too, and that was my father. He came down here and bought the mill and fought the claim, really because he had promised his father he would for the first Mary Fitton’s sake. But it was very awkward, and he had no documents, and so he lost. Then he got killed in the war, and his money was lost in the war, too, all except a hundred a year, which we’ve got. But you see how it all happened, don’t you? I mean, the Countess Josephine business, and why Hal is the proper rightful earl. You believe it, don’t you?’ she went on anxiously.

  Mr Campion’s pale eyes smiled from behind his enormous spectacles as he looked from the girl in the shadow to the green and lovely scene without. After all, he reflected, if the electric brougham were true, why not the story of the rightful earl?

  ‘Of course it’s true,’ said Amanda, breaking into his thoughts. ‘That’s why we stole the oak. Would you like to see it? These steps aren’t very safe, so you’ll have to take care.’

  She led him across the uneven floor to a very tottery open staircase, which led up to the apartm
ent above.

  ‘There isn’t time to show you all this now,’ she said, pointing vaguely to the big dusty barn in which they stood. ‘The oak’s in the tower. It took six men to get it there, besides me.’

  The tower of the mill proved to be a small wooden room, built on above the main structure, and as they climbed into it the air smelt hot and stuffy, and there was an ominous scampering in one corner.

  ‘Rats,’ the girl remarked cheerfully. ‘There’s dozens of them about. Ratting’s rather fun. Well, here you are. Here’s the oak.’

  She displayed a huge cross-section of an oak bole, about four inches thick, which leant up against the wall under the window.

  ‘We stole it; or at any rate we took it,’ she said proudly.

  ‘Very determined of you,’ murmured Mr Campion affably. ‘Where was it?’

  ‘On the tree, of course,’ she said. ‘If you’re interested I’ll tell you about it, but if you’re not I’ll save it for some other time.’ As usual she hurried on without waiting for a reply. ‘First of all, the oak tree that this belonged to was supposed to have been planted by the first Pontisbright that ever was, hundreds of years ago, and it stood up in the park by the Hall. It was famous all over the county. And then a long while ago, probably about seventeen hundred, a part of it blew off. So they cut the rest down quite short, until it was about as high as a table from the ground, and they fixed a brass sundial over it. When the Countess Josephine sold the house she sold the sundial, too, and it was unscrewed and taken away. Well, we found the tree – or rather, Father and Mary did, when Mary was quite young – and we stole this slice off it. It was a tremendous business to cut, I believe. I wasn’t old enough to know much about it then, but anyway here it is.’

  Mr Campion’s pale face was perfectly blank. ‘Very nice, too,’ he said. ‘But what for?’

  ‘The inscription, of course,’ said the girl. ‘It was on the wood under the sundial, rather badly carved and a bit mossy when we found it. But that’s gone now. I scrubbed it. If you could help me push it back a bit – it’s frightfully heavy, so be careful – I could show you what I meant.’

  Mr Campion was fast learning that association with Amanda always entailed strenuous physical exertion. He took off his coat, and between them they lowered the great disc gently to the floor. The underside of the wood, which now lay revealed, had roughly gouged signs upon its blackened surface. Cracks had defaced the letters in some places, but the tremendous depth of the carving and the size of the ciphers had helped to preserve their character.

  There appeared to be eight lines of lettering, each character being a good three inches high.

  Mr Campion said nothing, and the girl dropped upon her knees and with a somewhat grubby forefinger traced the words as she read, while the young man, bending over her, followed her finger, an expression of complete stupidity on his pleasant, vacuous face.

  ‘If Pontisbright would crownèd be,

  Three strange happenings must he see.

  The diamond must be rent in twain

  Before he wear his crown again.

  Thrice must the mighty bell be toll’d

  Before he shall the sceptre hold,

  And ere he to his birthright come

  Stricken must be Malplaquet drum.

  ‘Rather jolly, isn’t it?’

  Mr Campion looked more vague than ever. ‘I say,’ he began diffidently, ‘this would probably be of great use to old Wright in his book. I’d like to take a copy of it for my album, too. There’s one thing I don’t follow: if the tree was blown down about seventeen hundred, and the sundial was put on the stump then, how did this carving come to be on the wood itself?’

  ‘Oh, we worked that out,’ said Amanda. ‘It’s quite simple, really. You see, we imagine this inscription was meant to be a secret affair, and we think the man who wrote it was the father-in-law of the Countess Josephine. He was always writing bits of verse. Mother had some of his letters, and he often broke out into doggerel in those. You see,’ she went on earnestly, striving to make herself clear, ‘we think this writing was not done before the sundial was put on, but after. Someone unscrewed it, did the carving and then put the sundial back. We worked this out from the condition the letters were in when we found it.’

  ‘That would make the date of the inscription about eighteen-twenty, I suppose?’ ventured the young man, glancing up from the envelope on which he had been scribbling. ‘I say, this’ll help Wright tremendously in his book. There’s nothing like a secret inscription or two to give an author’s work the authentic touch. Then the publishers can say: “Mr Wright, who is, of course . . .” Well, well, he will be pleased.’

  ‘Isn’t it about time,’ said Amanda, regarding him steadily, ‘that you dropped all this holiday business? We know who you are. That’s why we were so keen on your coming to stay with us. That’s why I’ve shown you this. Does it interest you, or doesn’t it?’

  For some moments Mr Campion was silent. Amanda looked slightly uncomfortable.

  ‘Look here,’ she said with one of her sudden bursts of confidence, ‘perhaps I’d better tell you all about it now. You see, about a week ago a most unpleasant person, pretending to be a professor of some sort, presented himself at the front door and put Mary and me through a thorough cross-questioning about inscriptions; had we got any? had we heard of any in the wood? and all that sort of thing. Naturally we shut up like oysters and I had the oak moved up here for safety.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Campion soberly. ‘This professing person, was there anything odd about him?’

  ‘He hadn’t a widow’s peak, if that’s what you mean,’ said Amanda. ‘He was just an ordinary, scrubby little soul. Not bad enough to throw in the race, you know; but we didn’t like him.’

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Mr Campion. ‘Tell me, was it the honest manliness of my appearance which made you confide in me with such touching spontaneity?’

  ‘No,’ said Amanda. ‘I told you, we knew about you. Aunt Hatt used to be a great friend of Mrs Lobbett and her husband, down in the South somewhere, and she heard all about you from them. D’you remember them? She used to be Biddy Pagett.’

  Mr Campion gazed thoughtfully out of the window. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I remember Biddy. I remember Biddy very well.’

  Amanda shot a shrewd, quick glance in his direction and changed the subject.

  ‘When old Honesty Bull sent down to us this morning to tell us some people wanted to stay, he also told us your names. We had a council of war and decided that you were just the man to get into the house. It doesn’t really matter, does it?’

  Mr Campion turned to her and there was unexpected gravity in the eyes behind the spectacles.

  ‘Amanda,’ he said, ‘this has got to be kept quiet.’

  She nodded. ‘I know.’ She put back her head and passed a finger across her throat. ‘Not a word,’ she said. ‘Only, if there’s anything we can do, let us in on it, won’t you?’

  He seated himself upon the window-ledge. ‘How much of my illustrious life have you been able to mug up?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ said Amanda, crestfallen. ‘Aunt Hatt didn’t know much. She only knew your name and that you were in the adventure over at Mystery Mile. And we know you live in Bottle Street, and have a man-servant who’s an ex-convict.’

  ‘An ex-burglar,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Forget the convict. Lugg doesn’t like his college education mentioned. It’s a tradition with old Borstalians, I believe. Anything else?’

  ‘That’s all,’ said Amanda. ‘It isn’t really an acquaintanceship, is it? Only when you arrived I did hope something was going to happen. And now we’re on the subject I should like to point out that I would make a very good aide-de-camp.’

  ‘Or lieut,’ said Campion. ‘I often think that’s what the poet meant when he said Orpheus and his lieut.’

  ‘Very likely,’ said Amanda. ‘They made trees, didn’t they? That reminds me, let’s put this thing back.’

  When the oak was onc
e more hoisted into position and Mr Campion had resumed his coat, they went down into the mill again. Just before they came out into the yard he laid a hand upon her arm.

  ‘What happened on the heath last night?’ he enquired.

  The girl started and glanced behind her involuntarily, as though she feared some intangible audience. When she turned to him again her small face was very grave.

  ‘That doesn’t come into it,’ she said. ‘I can’t explain it, but that’s got to be forgotten.’

  Mr Campion followed her out into the sunshine.

  CHAPTER VII

  Cain’s Valley

  ‘IT’S THE FRIENDLINESS of the village I like,’ said Eager-Wright as the three paying guests of the mill walked across the heath that evening after dinner.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Guffy expansively. ‘You don’t get this curious clubbable atmosphere in many country places. What do you say, Campion?’

  The pale young man in the horn-rimmed spectacles who was wandering along beside the others, his habitual expression of affable idiocy very much in evidence, glanced up.

  ‘Oh, it’s all very nice,’ he said cheerfully. ‘All very nice indeed. Let’s hope it doesn’t lead to membership of the oldest club in the world.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Guffy.

  ‘Club on the head,’ said Campion promptly.

  ‘In my present mood I should enjoy it,’ said Eager-Wright. ‘She’s rather an amzing girl, don’t you think?’

  ‘Charming,’ agreed Guffy with unexpected warmth. ‘Charming. None of this modern nonsense about her. Sweet, and, you know, well –’ he coughed – ‘womanly. Gentle, discreet, and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Eager-Wright. ‘If you think working a mill, with dynamos, sluices, and general sack-heaving is a womanly occupation, I don’t know what you expect of your hoydens.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, I wasn’t talking about the brat!’ said Guffy with dignity. ‘I meant the elder sister. You aren’t baby snatching, I hope, Wright?’