Let Him Lie Page 9

  “It used to be in a coppice,” said Sarah. “Uncle Robert had all the trees cut down, except the ones on top.”

  She spoke lackadaisically. Jeanie looked at her. It was largely for Sarah’s sake that she had suggested a walk to Grim’s Grave, to take the child’s thoughts off the horror of her uncle’s death. Poor child, she looked extraordinarily ill—haggard, if such a word could be used of so young a face. Her normal clear pallor had a pasty tinge and the shadows around her eyes were murky-coloured, as though she had not slept.

  A wind blew across the country and rustled the tinder-leaved branches of the young oaks, but here in the shelter of the mound the air was still. Jeanie found suddenly that she could understand how to William Fone this was a holy place, a fearful place. What procession had once wound its way along the track that now was a macadam road, what gathering of priests and leaders and common men, chanting in a strange tongue and playing queer-shaped instruments now dimly remembered in harps and trumpets? What fluttering of white and purple robes, what flashing of the sun on polished metal! Almost Jeanie saw the procession, almost she expected the child to see it too.

  But turning, she saw Sarah standing limp and indifferent, her eyes on the grass, lips sulkily parted, shoulders drooping as though all the world’s cares were on them. That long-past procession vanished, the sound of its harps and trumpets became only the north-west wind again playing amongst the pines.

  “Sarah dear.”

  The little girl raised a lack-lustre eye.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re not feeling well.”

  “Yes, I am, thank you.”

  “You don’t look fit for the Girl Guide rally this afternoon.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Oh? Isn’t that rather a pity?”

  “I don’t belong to the Guides any more,” muttered Sarah. “I’ve resigned.”

  “What, since yesterday?” Queer child, what hyper-sensitiveness had led her to this?

  “Yes. I just wrote and said I resigned.”

  “But darling, you enjoyed it so!”

  A slow painful colour crept up Sarah’s face. Her eyelids reddened and she frowned more fiercely than ever. She said with a good deal of dignity, though her voice was thick:”

  “One leaves off enjoying things, sometimes.”

  “But—”

  Jeanie hesitated, uncertain whether to exhort, console or question. She gave Sarah’s hand a squeeze and dropped it.

  “Well, you know best, ducky. I suppose this mound’ll never be dug up now.”

  “I shouldn’t think so.” Unexpectedly Sarah added: ‘‘A good job, too! Digging things up and putting them in mouldy old museums where nobody sees them!”

  “Nobody can see them if they’re in the tumulus.”

  “And if they’re in mouldy old museums nobody wants to see them,” rejoined Sarah, unexpected young disciple of William Fone. She turned nervously at the sound of voices on the wind. When Peter Johnson and Hugh Barchard appeared upon the vallum at the opposite side of Grim’s Grave, guns under their arms and a spaniel at their heels, she flinched and, suddenly turning as though she did not want to be seen, moved with deliberate unconsciousness away. Jeanie caught her hand.

  “Don’t you want to see Peter?”

  “No!” Sarah averted her face. A sudden sob broke from her. “People shouldn’t have guns. People shouldn’t shoot things!” she gulped, and breaking from Jeanie’s hand went off through the trees out of sight.

  It was in a somewhat critical mood that Jeanie returned Barchard’s “good morning” and Peter’s nervous smile. To come out with guns to-day—the day after the inquest on poor Molyneux—was it not a little more insensitive than one would have expected of Peter Johnson? Her greeting to the two men was curt, and Peter looked taken aback.

  “We came after rabbits, Miss Halliday,” said Barchard, “but you’re before us. I made a kind of promise once to Mr. Molyneux I’d shoot a rabbit here every day, and help him clear Grim’s Grave of them.”

  Jeanie felt a sudden reaction in his favour. Life must go on as usual, after all, no matter who departed from its scene nor in what manner!

  “There were lots about,” said Jeanie. “But they bolted when we came on the scene. I didn’t know you were a sportsman, Peter?”

  The young man frowned.

  “I’m not. I hate shooting at living things, as a matter of fact, only—” He glanced at Barchard as if to say that he had been prevailed upon.

  “Mr. Johnson’s a very fine shot,” said Barchard seriously. He dangled before Jeanie’s eyes a very small limp bird. “Mr. Johnson shot this snipe clean at twenty yards.”

  Jeanie, no sportswoman, did not find this feat impressive.

  “It doesn’t look very nourishing.”

  “I was an ass to shoot the thing,” said Peter sourly. “One seems to lose one’s head when one’s given a gun.”

  Barchard smiled and shook his head.

  “You’re the finest shot I’ve ever seen, Mr. Johnson, say what you like.”

  “Where did you get your practice, Peter?”

  “I haven’t had much, except target practice. I used to practise a good deal on Mr. Molyneux’s targets when I was down here,” answered Peter. He spoke unwillingly, as though the subject irked him. “I’ve got a naturally good eye, I suppose. The snipe was a pure fluke, though.”

  “How’s Mr. Fone?”

  “Oh, he’s pretty well, thank you,” replied Barchard. “It’s worrying for him, though, all this questioning.”

  “Have the police been bothering you at Cole Harbour again?”

  Barchard looked across the fields through a gap in the trees towards Cleedons. He answered slowly:

  “It seems there’s a pistol missing from the top Tower room at Cleedons. Missing since Monday—or so the housemaid at Cleedons says.”

  “Monday! That’s the day—”

  “The day Mr. Molyneux was shot. Yes.”

  There was a pause. A sort of chill seemed to fall upon the three of them. Jeanie was the first to speak.

  “Does the housemaid know how long it had been there?”

  “Ever since she’s worked at Cleedons, she says—over a year. So you can see, Miss Halliday, the police haven’t done with the master yet. Seeing, you see, he was in the Tower the very time Mr. Molyneux was shot.”

  Jeanie uttered a little startled exclamation. Somebody else had been in the Tower at the time that Robert Molyneux was shot. Jeanie recalled the blink, the moment’s hesitation with which Tamsin Wills had admitted to being in the lower Tower room “looking for Sarah.” She had been first to the upper room, she had said, and found William Fone there. Had she been “looking for Sarah” then? Or for something else? A weapon? Jeanie recalled the malignant gleam with which Miss Wills had praised and vilified the dead. And she heard Sarah’s reedy little voice uttering: I don’t think she’s staying much longer. Uncle Robert says I’m beyond her She adores Aunt Agnes. What if— Jeanie shivered. No, no! She must not pursue such thoughts. Tamsin Wills was, after all, a human being, not a demon.

  Hugh Barchard was speaking.

  “But if Finister knew Mr. Fone as I know him, he’d spare himself all this trouble. Because if Mr. Fone had shot Mr. Molyneux, he wouldn’t be trying to hide it. Mr. Fone does what he thinks right and stands by what he does!”

  A certain ring in the man’s voice reminded Jeanie of Mrs. Barchard’s vehement: He’s the cleverest best gentleman that ever lived! The queer Fone certainly had the power, unusual in so eccentric a character, of arousing devotion!

  “I’ll be glad when it’s over,” said Hugh Barchard. “I don’t like to think of the questions that’ll be asked the master at the inquest when it comes on again. He’ll say a lot of things that’ll sound queer to ordinary people. He’ll tell the truth, and the truth he sees isn’t the same as ordinary people’s truth. Funny thing, but when I didn’t really know Mr. Fone I used to think he was crackers. Now it seems the other peop
le I talk to are mostly crackers, and Mr. Fone’s the only sane man among the lot of them. It’s like being with a man after being with a lot of silly sheep. He does what he likes and he sticks by what he does.”

  The almost fanatical gleam in Barchard’s blue eyes amused Jeanie. How much, she wondered, of the queer Fone’s character and philosophy could this man understand? Enough, perhaps, to give him that sense of liberation perpetually craved by all but the dullest souls, enough to fortify him against mean gossip and the eager criticism of the herd.

  “Well,” said Barchard with the sudden briskness of one who perceives work waiting to be done, “I must be getting along. You’ll meet me in the spinney, I expect, Mr. Johnson. Come on, Rosa!”

  He transferred the dangling little corpse to Peter’s unwilling hand and went off, followed by his spaniel, through the thin ring of trees and down the slope of the meadow. Peter was left with the snipe hanging from his fingers, a sick look upon his face which might have made Jeanie smile had she not quickly realised it was something more serious than this poor little bird that had brought it there.

  “What’s the matter, Peter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But you look awfully white!”

  Peter made a very obvious effort to pull himself together.

  “It’s only that I hate this beastly so-called sport. Shooting birds and things makes me feel quite sick. And ashamed of myself, too, for not having the guts to say so to people like Barchard.”

  “Peter, surely it’s not only that wretched bird that’s made you look like this!”

  “Yes, it is.” His dark eyes gazed somewhat inimically into Jeanie’s. His lips set sullenly. She changed the subject.

  “Did you know about the pistol missing from the Tower room?”

  “No,” said Peter constrainedly. “I haven’t seen Fone since Finister called last night. He’s not up yet.”

  “It rather brings the thing home to Cleedons, doesn’t it? I mean, if there’s a pistol missing from the Tower room since Monday, it seems terribly likely that that’s the pistol that was used to shoot poor Mr. Molyneux. Doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “But you see what that means. Mr. Molyneux must have been shot by somebody who—who was—who’d been—who might have—”

  “‘Had access to’ is the phrase you want. The police use it a lot. Somebody who had access to Cleedons. Like me. I had access to Cleedons. In fact, I was there. Look for the motive. That’s another thing the police are fond of saying. I’ve got a lovely motive, too, as well as access. Dismissed, dishonest secretary, not quodded, murders master. How’s that? I think it would look very well on the front page of some beastly picture paper!”

  His bitter voice struck harshly on Jeanie’s ear. She felt sorry for him, but a little impatient, too.

  “Peter,” said she, “I shouldn’t waste my energy feeling bitter about it, if I were you. As a sensible person you must see that you are a suspect—you can’t blame Finister for suspecting you. You have behaved like a bit of an idiot, you know. I mean, over that money.”

  “I know. I was the complete chivalrous owl. You said so last night. And I quite agreed with you. Don’t keep rubbing it in.”

  “Well, have you told Superintendent Finister about it yet, and why you came down here on Monday?”

  Peter flushed and frowned.

  “You haven’t! Oh, Peter! Chivalry’s bad enough, but pigheadedness is worse!”

  “I didn’t have to tell him. He asked me yesterday morning, just before the inquest, if it was so, and I—I admitted that it was. Do you think Agnes could possibly have seen the light about it?”

  No, Jeanie did not think Agnes had voluntarily exonerated Peter, much though she would have liked to think so.

  “I suppose the police can put two and two together,” she replied. “After all, they’ll have questioned everybody—gone into all sorts of things. I don’t suppose it was difficult to guess the truth.” She glanced up at the tall boy’s brooding face. “Don’t you feel a bit happier about it now? Don’t you think, now that your motive for coming down here on Monday’s cleared up, that Finister’s relaxed his watch on you a bit?”

  Peter s dark face did not clear at this suggestion. On the contrary, his unhappy frown deepened.

  “I know jolly well he hasn’t. I’m being sleuthed all over the place. I’m more Finister’s pet suspect than ever. I—Finister thinks—they think—Oh God! I don’t know what they think!”

  “You do,” said Jeanie, looking at him curiously. “Or you guess. What is it, Peter?”

  A tide of painful red crept up the young man’s face. He muttered gruffly:

  “Mrs. Molyneux and I—I believe they think—”

  “Oh, how absurd!” cried Jeanie, laughing. “Agnes! What extraordinary minds policemen do have!”

  “Yes, don’t they?” agreed Peter, still heavily frowning, however. “Yes, I’d laugh myself, I dare say. Only, you see, Jeanie, it happens to be partly true.”

  Jeanie stopped laughing very abruptly. A hot flush burnt her face. She felt an extraordinary discomfort, embarrassment and misery all in a moment for no particular reason.

  “Partly true, I said,” said Peter, eyeing her sombrely. “I felt devilish romantic about her, if you must have it, Jeanie, in a perfectly proper way. The troubadour and the Queen of Beauty touch, you know. Well, there wasn’t anybody else to look at for miles around. And she is lovely, Agnes is. I used to gaze at her a good deal. And talk to her about my amazing exploits at school, you know, and all that sort of thing.”

  “Oh well, Peter!” said Jeanie, adjusting her thoughts as rapidly as possible to this little revelation. “I suppose when one comes to think of it, you wouldn’t have taken the money for her, and she wouldn’t have risked asking you to, unless there was some—well—some feeling in the air. I suppose—”

  “What do you suppose?”

  “I suppose the police haven’t anything to go on but guesswork?”

  “No. Except—”

  “Oh?”

  “Except I wrote a note to Mrs. Molyneux. If they’ve got hold of that—but she’d have destroyed it. How could they know anything about it?”

  “Oh, Peter!”

  “It wasn’t anything much. I had to wait ages on Monday before I could see her. She was in her room, dressing. I didn’t know how I could see her alone, with all the Field Club there. I pushed a note under her door. It was nothing much. It just said I couldn’t believe she really meant to let me down. And that I must see her, if only for a moment. And—and didn’t she realise what she’d done to me?”

  “That all?”

  Peter swung his snipe nervously round and round, and then, becoming aware of what he was doing, dropped it abruptly and looked down at it with a sort of horror. He cleared his throat.

  “Well—yes. Except that—” His voice sank gruffly. “—that she had all my devotion, always.”

  Jeanie said dryly:

  “Oh, had she?”

  Peter gave a smile that was half-embarrassed half-grim.

  “Well, I thought so on Monday.”

  Jeanie, looking with blank eyes at the tumulus, heard the pattering run of Agnes’s feet upstairs after the interview with Superintendent Finister, the click of her heels hurrying along the corridor.

  “She remembered the note and wanted to destroy it quickly. I expect she was too late. I think we can take it, Peter, that the police know all about that note of yours.”

  “Damn them!”

  “There’s only one person who need say ‘damn them,’ and that’s the murderer. The police can’t find out anything that hasn’t happened, but they can, and probably will, find out everything that has, so for Heaven’s sake, Peter, be open with them!”

  “Bit late, now. They know all.”

  “And they’ve had to find most of it out for themselves without any help from you,” said Jeanie reproachfully. “By the way, Peter, did you know Barchard owed money to Mr. Mol
yneux?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that Mr. Molyneux was pressing him to repay it?”

  “Yes. As his secretary I had to do quite a lot of the pressing myself. Not the slightest good, of course, because Barchard hasn’t a bean except the salary old Fone gives him. I think it was a matter of principle with Mr. Molyneux more than anything else. You see, when Barchard came back from Canada full of some new method of poultry-keeping, Molyneux very decently lent him a couple of hundred pounds to buy some chickens with. As a matter of fact, I happen to know he regarded it at the time more or less as a gift, and never expected to get it back. Only Mr. Molyneux was pretty strait-laced about some things, you know. And when Barchard started neglecting his chickens and having a lady to live with him and spending all his money in riotous living, I think Mr. Molyneux saw no reason why he should pay for it, and small blame to him. And he’d been dunning Barchard for it ever since. Not with any hope of getting it, you know. Just a feeling that Barchard ought to be made to sit up. As a matter of fact,” said Peter, “I did once suggest to Mr. Molyneux that we might as well call it a bad debt and save our notepaper and stamps, but he took me up rather sharply. He was obstinate about it. I think he’d been badly disappointed in Barchard’s character, and couldn’t leave off kicking himself over it, if you know what I mean.”

  “I suppose,” said Jeanie thoughtfully, “Mr. Molyneux hadn’t been specially pressing him lately? Sending solicitor’s letters or threatening proceedings or anything?”

  Peter smiled.

  “No, he wouldn’t have wasted six-and-eightpence on such a hopeless quest. I used to tip off a stiff letter to Barchard every three months or so, just to keep his memory jogged, so to speak. Oh no! Mr. Molyneux would never have gone farther. He had too much sense and too little hope of ever getting his two hundred back. And he wasn’t vindictive about it, you know, only determined not to condone anything.”