Dead Man's Quarry (17 page)

“Couldn't,” said Felix, who, coming around the corner of the terrace, had looked a little astonished at finding John and his cousin standing with clasped hands. “I must
do
something.”

“Oh, dear!” said Blodwen, with a comical lift of her eyebrows. “That's just what I've been telling Mr. Christmas. I'm afraid he's going to find us rather a nuisance. We must try not to hem him round at every turn with our efforts to help him. Now who on earth is this?” she went on, as a small, grey car came slowly up the drive. “Some kind friends, I suppose, come to express condolence and satisfy curiosity. Oh, it's only Mr. Rampson! Well, I'm going to wake up Cousin Jim.”

She departed, and John and Felix went forward to greet Rampson.

“Hullo!” said John. “Who's Sydenham got with him? A beautiful young lady.”

Felix's face lit up, and then, as a tall, well-built girl in tweeds got out of the car, became dull and weary again.

“Nora Browning,” he said without enthusiasm. “I thought—”

He left the sentence unfinished. John, watching the approach of a hatless young woman, fair-haired, with a serene and serious face, thought of Arcadian Artemis in tweeds and brogues, and wondered at the boredom in his young friend's voice. It was soon explained.

“Oh, Felix,” said the young lady, after greetings and introductions had passed, “I was to say good-bye to you from Isabel. She had a telegram this morning from her aunt to go home at once, poor darling! Her aunt's ill. I was to say good-bye to you, and to—to say how frightfully sorry she was about everything, and—”

John thought he could detect in the girl's low, charming voice the apologetic note of one who knows that his news is ill news, but is not quite sure how ill.

“Oh,” said Felix lifelessly. “I see. Thank you, Nora.”

Little enough in that, but enough in the boy's schooled expressionless face to explain his indifference to Arcadian Artemis.

“She was awfully sorry,” said Nora hesitatingly.

“Thanks awfully,” said Felix, and said no more.

“Is that the Miss Donne I met at the quarry the other day?”

“When my young brother Lion made himself such a nuisance to you? Yes. She was to have stayed with us ten days. But you see her aunt hasn't anybody else to look after her, so—! Mr. Christmas, did you really say that you wanted to see Lion's map? He thinks you did, and made me bring it with me to show you. Here it is. I was to say you could keep it as long as you liked, until you've digested all its subtleties, I suppose, but that it's absolutely unique and isn't insured! I suppose that's a delicate way of saying don't put it in the waste-paper basket by mistake. Just have a look at it to please the child, and give me some encouraging message for him, and I'll take it back. He's terribly proud of it.”

“I really should like to keep it for a bit, though, if I may. I say! It really is rather a good bit of work, isn't it?” John spread the sheet over the wicker table, and the three of them leant over it, prepared to admire and be amused.

Felix turned aside, folded his arms on the stone balustrade and looked across the smooth lawns at some remote and mournful visions of his own.

“He certainly is thorough, young Lion,” agreed Lion's sister, with a smile. “Look! This is the Tram Inn, with a note about having hard-boiled eggs for tea. And this is the bit of river that we bathed in, and the leech that Father saw, which made us all scramble out. Oh, dear! It seems years ago, already!”

She glanced at Felix's inattentive back with a sweet and wistful sympathy which gave rise in John's mind to vague thoughts about the exasperating and time-honoured blindness of love.

“Sheepshanks Cottage,” remarked Rampson. “That's where the asters are—where we had the lemonade the other day. Upper Ring Farm, that's where they keep that fiendish dog and the lodger's uncle is an undertaker.”

Nora raised her eyebrows at this, and John smiled.

“Young Hufton,” he said, and as Nora's face remained faintly interrogatory, went on, with a sudden quickening of interest: “Do you know anything about young Hufton? His character, interests and habits?”

“Hufton?” repeated Nora, wrinkling her broad forehead. “Oh!” She glanced at Felix and spoke in a lowered tone. “Is that the man who found poor Charles? No, I don't know anything about him. I didn't know he existed before this happened. Why?” John wondered for a moment whether he should mention Isabel's name, but decided on caution. Nora and Isabel were apparently bosom friends, and he did not want to prejudice the former against himself. She was obviously a strong-minded and intelligent girl who might be a very useful ally.

“I heard somewhere that Taffy would be a good name for him, that's all, and wondered if he were a well-known character in these parts. You know, ‘Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a—'”

“Thief. I don't know, I'm sure. He may be. I never heard of him till a day or two ago. But—” Her expression said :“What of it?”

“Oh, nothing,” replied John casually. “Only, as you know, there's a signet-ring missing. And young Hufton is the man who found the poor chap's body. It's just possible that he may have seen no harm in—collecting the ring, so to speak.”

“Yes. But wouldn't he have taken the money, too?”

“Might have felt squeamish about turning him over and rifling his pockets.”

Nora nodded.

“Although,” she said slowly, “there's something funny about the money, Mr. Christmas, and it looks to me as if somebody had helped himself—either the murderer or young Hufton. Because—”

“Well?”

“There was five pounds in his note-case when he was found, wasn't there?”

“Yes?”

“Well,” said the girl thoughtfully, “he had at least twenty pounds in his pocket on the day he died. What happened to the rest of it?”

John, who had been lounging on the arm of a garden chair, stiffened abruptly.

“What?” he exclaimed. “Are you sure? Because this is important, Miss Browning!”

“Yes,” she said. “I'm quite sure. I would have mentioned it before, but I've only just thought of it. You see, he insisted on paying for our tea at the Tram. And I was with him when he went to settle up with the waitress; he didn't know where to find her and I did, so I showed him the way to the kitchen. The bill came to ten and six. And when he paid it I saw—I couldn't have helped seeing—that he had at least two five-pound notes in his case, as well as a thick wad of treasury notes. You see,” she added, “he took them all out of his case to find a ten-shilling note among them, and—and rather flourished them about. He was rather inclined to do that,” said Nora with the faintest note of distaste in her voice; and then, as if regretting that slight censure, added: “Poor man! It was only that he wasn't used to having a lot of money, and felt pleased about it, like a child.”

“Then,” said John, “either Hufton
is
a Taffy, or the murderer made away with quite a lot of money, at least fifteen pounds. I wonder why he left the five pounds.”

“I suppose, so that robbery shouldn't be suspected. Though it's funny he should have taken the ring. It wasn't at all a valuable one.”

“He was a fool to take the five-pound notes,” remarked Rampson suddenly. “They can easily be traced.”

“They can,” agreed John enthusiastically, getting to his feet. “By Jove, Miss Browning, this is frightfully important, you know! If we can get the numbers of those notes we shall be in a fair way to clearing Sir Morris! And as they were pretty sure to have been paid out by a bank, there oughtn't to be any difficulty about getting the numbers.”

“But we must remember,” Nora reminded him, though her own cheeks were glowing with excitement, “that they may have been stolen by young Hufton. And in that case they don't help us.”

“True. I must see this Hufton and try to wangle the truth out of him. I saw him at the inquest, a lout of a fellow. I think I shall go now,” added John. “Why not?”

For a fraction of a moment his eyes and those of Miss Nora Browning met. Hers, wide and clear, carefully veiled but did not hide from John the excited childish request: “Oh, let me come too!” Well, why not? Clear-headed, quick-witted and hardy, with enough personal interest in the case but not too much, she was the ideal ally.

“Come too,” said John casually, “if you care to. You can tell me one or two things I want to know as we go along.”

She nodded, but glanced at Felix, as if she thought he had the prior claim.

John shook his head emphatically.

“Can't do our detecting in a char-à-banc,” he explained. “Besides, I've got another job for Felix, if he'll do it.”

Felix turned at the sound of his own name and came rather lackadaisically forward.

“What can I do?”

“Cheer up,” replied John rather unsympathetically. Felix flushed, looked angry and then reproachful, and finally squared his shoulders and made an attempt to smile.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I know it's no use to feel like this, but—”

“It's worse than no use, it's definitely harmful. There are no end of things for you to do, and you can't do them properly if you don't pull your socks up. Look. Do you know what bank your cousin used?”

“Barclay's.”

“Well, the first thing you have to do is to go to the branch he used, find out when he last cashed a cheque and for how much, whether he had any of it in five-pound notes, and if so, what were the numbers. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” said Felix in a rather forced tone of alacrity. He added immediately: “How do I find out?”

“Any way you like,” replied John cheerfully, making towards his car. “I leave that to your ingenuity.”

He had started up the car and begun to move down the drive when a shout from Felix arrested him.

“I say! The bank'll be shut!”

“Then go and disturb the manager at his tea. Take Rampson with you. He knows no shame.”

“Aren't you rather brutal to poor Felix?” murmured Nora as they passed out at the lodge gates. “After all, just think! It's his
father
!”

“Exactly. It's his father who requires our sympathy, not Felix. One mustn't let one's sympathies wander from the real sufferer. The sufferings of his family and friends are only incidental, and if one's going to be any practical use one can't waste time condoling with them. Felix and Miss Price are going to be a bit of a nuisance,” added John thoughtfully. “I can't find jobs for them to do every hour of the day, and I can't take the whole world into my confidence. Besides, Felix really isn't trustworthy.”

“Mr. Christmas!” cried Nora indignantly, flushing carnation.

“I didn't mean that,” said John gently. “He's the soul of honour, I know. But lacking in even the simplest form of cunning. Look at the way he tried to burn that letter under the nose of P.C. Thingumytite.”

“Yes,” agreed Nora, subsiding. “He's like his father, impulsive.” She sighed. “Poor Felix!”

“Why poor Felix?”

“Well—”

“Yes, I know. But why poor Felix in just that tone of voice?”

“I dunno. Only—one might think that a little thing like Isabel having gone home simply wouldn't matter at a time like this. But it's those little things that are just the last straw really. Aren't they?”

“Yes,” agreed John, noting with surprise the little, quickly-controlled quiver in the girl's pleasant voice.

“I thought she would have come up to say good-bye to him,” went on Nora. “But she wouldn't. Though there was heaps of time.”

“Oh! They were on good-bye-saying terms, then?”

“I thought so,” murmured Nora in a puzzled tone. There was a memory in her mind of a little riverside overhung with willows where they had stopped for lunch one day, and dispersed to wander in search of ferns for Dr. Browning's collection; of a drooping willow which, till she heard low voices, screened from her wandering a black and a red-gold head, drooped together under the grey leaves; a low murmur:“Oh, Isabel! Oh, Isabel!” which had Sent her softly back by the way she had come. She sighed.

“But one never knows,” she said. No, certainly one never knew with Isabel. Delightful Isabel, gayest of companions, one never knew what went on in that shapely head.

“Has your friend Isabel stayed here before?” asked John, pursuing his own thoughts which led him far from Felix's hypothetical love affairs.

“No, never. I've only known her about ten weeks.” John looked his faint surprise. Nora turned and studied him in silence for a moment.

“Why, Mr. Christmas?” She went on before he could speak: “Was it Isabel, then, who told you that young Hufton was a thief?”

“Dear me, Miss Browning, you're not at all the traditional Watson! Far too intelligent! Yes, it was. What do you make of it?”

Nora wrinkled her level brows.

“I—don't know!” she said slowly. “I suppose— she'd heard it somewhere. Yes, of course, why not? She didn't hear it from me. But she may have heard it, casually, from anyone. She talks to everybody, and everybody loves talking to her.”

“But it's such a rum subject of conversation for people who're just passing the time of day! ‘Good morning. Nice day. Looks like rain. Do you know Mr. J. Hufton? He is in the habit of taking what isn't his'n.' I mean to say, Miss Browning, is it likely?” Nora half laughed, half frowned.

“No. But—one never knows what people may talk about! Why didn't you ask Isabel where she heard it?”

“I did, practically. She started picking wild strawberries.”

“Picking strawberries! Whatever for?”

“Partly, I thought, but that may be merely my low, suspicious mind, to give herself time to recover from a
faux pas
. And then she said it might have been one of the servants.”