Dead Man's Quarry (22 page)

“About the murder, I expect,” said Miss Watt with a resigned sigh, manoevring herself in front of the mirror and touching her curling-pins with a depressed, uncertain hand. “I'm sure I'm willing to tell all I can, though I've told it again and again. I'm just damping Father's tea, but if you'll please to step into the parlour I'll be with you in a moment.”

She led him back along the passage and into the room in which the inquest had been held. Lowered green blinds still gave it a funereal and gloomy air.

“You won't mind waiting a moment, I expect,” observed the girl, and still anxiously fingering her curling-pins she departed.

John sat gingerly down on the broken-springed horsehair-covered sofa and had just opened a volume of
The Girls' Friend
for 1885 when the door, which Miss Watt had gently closed, burst open. Mine host appeared, in his shirt-sleeves and with fiercely ruffled hair. At the sight of John he appeared surprised but not discomfited.

“Oh, ah!” he remarked profoundly. “Where be that damned girl?”

“I understand she's making your tea.”

“That her bain't. I've a-damped it myself. Out a-counting of her hens, I expect, that's where her be. Her thinks more o' they hens than her do of her father, be a long sight. Wring all their necks one day, I will.”

He scratched his grey-stubbled chin and looked dreamily at his visitor, lost for the moment in this delightful vision of wholesale slaughter.

“So I would,” he said regretfully at last. “Only, cold bacon for me breakfast goes agin me stomach. Well, come on!”

“Where to?” asked John in amusement, laying
The Girls' Friend
back on the bamboo table.

Mr. Watt made a wide and jovial gesture.

“I be having of me tea in back kitchen, and could do with a bit o' company. You could do with a cup of tea, I expect, with a drop in it. Come on!”

And mine host led the way back along the passage and into the large, stone-flagged kitchen which, with its open window, long deal table, great rough dresser and litter of utensils, made a pleasing contrast with the room they had just left. Lowering himself heavily into a protesting wicker chair, he poured John out a cup of steaming black brew, and passing him the bottle adjured him to help himself without embarrassment.

“I seed you at the inquest, master,” he observed genially, soaking a slice of saffron cake in his tea and eating it with difficulty but zest. “What'd ye think of un?” he added, as if the affair had been an entertainment staged by himself for the amusement of his patrons.

“What did you?” asked John diplomatically.

“Oh, ah! Ada her can't abide an inquest, but I don't mind one now an' agin. 'Tis good for business, d'ye see. They has drinks while they waits, and them as can't get in has drinks, and they has drinks afterwards and talks things over. Got the right man, has they, master?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Oh, ah! Mebbe not. But I likes an inquest now an' agin. Last one we had here were when old Borley o' Wintersbrook were drownded. He—”

“Oh, Father!”

Miss Watt, her curling-pins removed and her dark locks arranged in incongruous waves around her permanently worried face, stood in the doorway and looked reproachfully at her parent.

“It's me as should say ‘Oh, Darter!'” he responded good-humouredly. “But I've damped the tea and poured it out, so draw up and cut the gentleman a bit o' cake. They dratted chickens won't come to no harm.”

“'Tisn't the chickens,” protested Miss Watt sadly, and sitting down she cut the cake with an air of dissociating herself entirely from it and from the rest of the meal. “Tis the litter you've got here, Father, with the kettle on the table-cloth and all! The gentleman'll think as we don't know no better.”

‘“Nor we does,” replied her father, with the utmost placidity. He added:“Show me the man as can eat without making of a litter, my girl.”

The young woman's anxious eyes sought John's with a look of depressed apology for her parent. John changed the subject, accepting a piece of dry, yellow cake.

“Have you missed any more eggs, Miss Watt?”

“No, sir, not since them I told you about on Monday. But I've had padlocks put on the runs. Superintendent Lovell, he haven't caught the thief yet.”

“My soul!” ejaculated her father, putting down his brimming saucer. “Do ee think as the police hasn't nothing better to think of but a two-three eggs as the rats took off? Hant you heard o' such a thing as a murder in these parts?”

A look of weak obstinacy settled on the young woman's face.

“There was seven eggs,” she observed with a long-suffering air. “And the police is there to catch thieves same as murderers, I expect. And a thief's a thief, whether he thieves eggs or dimongs.” A tearful note crept into her voice. “You've made this tea that strong, Father, it pretty near skins my tongue. And as for thinking o' nothing but the chickens, I'd like to know where the Tram'd be if I didn't sell fowls and eggs reg'lar and keep the money coming in. And it weren't the rats.”

Mr. Watt favoured John with a slow, comradely wink.

“Woman,” he remarked indistinctly, savouring a mouthful of the criticized brew, “be never happy unless they be thinking they're a-saving of a man from ruin. Ne'er fret, Ada. Put a drop out o' the bottle in yer tea, and believe me, my girl, it were the rats.”

Ada cast a glance of extreme disfavour at the proffered bottle and replied simply:

“It were not the rats.”

“I tell you, my girl, it were.”

“Will I put you another cup o' tea, sir, with a little water from the kettle?” asked Miss Watt, turning to John with an ingratiating air that subtly rebuked her contentious papa. She was unable, however, to refrain from murmuring confidentially to John's cup as she put in the milk that whatever it was, it wasn't the rats.

Either the aspersion on his tea-making or the meek obstinacy of his daughter's tone suddenly aroused the landlord's ready wrath. A great fist hit the table with a bang that made cups rattle in their saucers. The sandy cat, which had been waiting under a chair for its saucer of milk, streaked suddenly out of the window, as if its conscience had smitten it. The terrier lying on the hearth-rug looked mildly up and wagged a pacific tail.

“It were the rats!” cried Mr. Watt. “I
know
, my girl, and I has my reasons for knowing! So let's have no more of this contradictiousness, and don't drown the gentleman's tea. His nerves'll stand more'n what yours will, I'll be bound!”

Ada Watt looked aggrieved, but contented herself with remarking in a tone of tremulous acidity that she supposed it was also the rats who took her apples.

“Do you often get apples stolen from your orchard?” asked John, thinking of the two Worcester pearmains which Rampson had discovered in the quarry.

“The boys is perfect terrors,” Miss Watt assured him earnestly. “Though not so bad as a rule as it was last Monday, with the boughs dragged down and broken and all. Father'd say it were the rats, I suppose, but it were more like a gorilla.” She cast a tearful glance at her father, but he appeared to judge the challenge not worth the taking of the saucer from his lips.

“Does anybody else near here grow Worcester pearmains, do you know?”

“There isn't no other orchard, not what you could call an orchard, nearer nor eight miles. There's apple-trees in the gardens, but they're little sour cider apples mostly. I don't know of anyone nearer nor Farmer Withers as grows apples like we've got, and he's over to Hereford way. It's to be expected as we should lose a few apples to the school children, I suppose. But what I can't get over is losing seven eggs to once like that. I never had no eggs took before.”

“There you go again!” exclaimed Mr. Watt in tones of deep disgust. “Bain't I telling you it were the rats? Now I'll tell you how I knows. I wouldn't tell you afore, you was so set and silly, telling of the police and all. I knows it were the rats, for I found the shells when I were clearing the orchard ditch on Thursday. All dragged close to a rat-hole, they was, hid in the grass. I put some poison in the hole and I cleared the shells out of the way. So now you know as it were the rats as took the precious eggs. And for the Lord's sake let's hear no more about it!”

Ada Watt's pale, sharp-featured face attempted to express scornful disbelief but succeeded only in looking disappointed. There was a brief, uncomfortable pause.

“You did ought to have told me, Father,” she said tearfully at last. “Letting me go telling everyone as we'd had a thief after our eggs!”

“Dear Lord of Heaven!” exclaimed Mr. Watt picturesquely. “Hain't I told ye, and told ye, and told ye, and TOLD YE it were the rats?” He rose, scraping chair-legs on the flags. “And did ye ever know me tell a thing as I hadn't good reason for?”

His daughter, clearing away the tea-things, met this question with silence. Mr. Watt scratched his chin and eyed her enigmatic back.

“I'll show ye where I finded they,” he volunteered.

“No, thank you, Father,” she responded distantly. “I believes you.”

The landlord led the way out of the back door into the garden with its rows of vegetables and clumps of parsley and thyme and its gooseberry bushes festooned with drying kitchen cloths.

“Obstinate, be Ada,” he remarked sadly, untying the complicated knots of string which fastened the gate into the orchard. “Her's a good girl for work, but more obstinate nor what a man have a right to expect in his only daughter. And that be the truth.” And with a heavy sigh he led the way in among the old, low-growing apple-trees, heavy this year with a rich load of fruit.

“What with wopses and birds,” remarked Mr. Watt, dispassionately squashing one of the former pests on his sleeve, “and chickens and rats, a chap can't call his orchard his own. Here be the ditch as I were clearing out, as you can see, and here be the hole where I finded the shells. Show me the boy as'll suck seven eggs and leave the shells behind, when he might take they home and boil they! Boys, her says! Be that a rat-hole, master, or bain't it?”

John went down on his knees to examine the large hole in the bank below the hedge.

Mr. Watt laughed.

“You won't find the rats at home, master.”

“Looks like a rabbit-hole to me,” remarked John diffidently, slipping his hand into it.

“Oh, ah? No, no, mister. He be a rat-hole right enough. For why? Rabbits, they doesn't eat eggs.”

John, judging that an attempt to instruct his host in the first principles of logic would be ill-advised, contented himself with a nod, and feeling round in the damp, earthy hollow came across something light and brittle. A broken egg-shell.

“Oh, ah!” exclaimed the innkeeper with satisfaction. “Now that proves my words, mister. Here be an eggshell and here be a rat-hole, and here be an egg-shell
in
a rat-hole. Boys, her says, and goes and tells police about it!”

John examined the egg-shell, which, though caved in at one side, was still entire.

“Will you let me keep this?”

The landlord's genial expression faded slowly off into a look of dubiety, as though he found himself disappointed in John.

“Oh, ah!” he assented rather unwillingly, scratching his head. “I reckon he won't be much use to ye, mister. But he be no manner of use at all to I, so you be welcome.”

“Thank you,” said John gravely, and wrapping the shell carefully in a handkerchief, put it in his pocket.

The innkeeper watched him with a saddened, disillusioned air. He had taken John for a man of common sense. He hesitated, in silence. He had intended to top off John's tea with a drop of something more interesting. But in his opinion a man so lost to sanity as to collect hen's egg-shells might as well go dry as not. However, he was, when sober, a courteous and obliging soul; he contented himself by asking with slightly impaired geniality:

“Be there aught else I can do for ye, master?”

“If you wouldn't mind telling me where Mr. Letbe lives?”

“Ole Jimmy Letbe? He bides up at Wintersbrook, near five mile away. You goes out on the main road and takes the first turn to the right at the foot of Rodland Hill, and then straight along. But I doubt you'll not find he at home, master. He be working up at nurseryman's, and they goes on late these summer months.”

“Will his wife be at home?”

“Oh, ah! Unless her be out. And he've a daughter to home now, too. There'll be summun about, I expect. Do ye collect birds' eggs, mister?”

“Only this one,” answered John, patting his pocket with a smile.

Mr. Watt conducted him out on to the road through the orchard gate which, John noted, was like the garden gate tied up with string, and stood watching him go with a disillusioned air. He replied to John's waved farewell with a friendly but not effusive gesture and went thoughtfully back to the inn to open up the bar.

Wintersbrook was a tiny hamlet in the valley grouped round an old stone bridge over a narrow stream. A mill, a farmhouse and a dozen cottages comprised the little place, and John had no difficulty in finding the square, slate-built self-respecting little cottage in which James Letbe lived. After a casual inspection, he knocked at the cottage which had the neatest and best-laid-out garden, and to his inquiries for Mr. Letbe the woman who opened the door replied that he weren't to home, but would be presently.

“Is Miss Letbe in?”

“Yes, she is.” The elderly woman looked him over doubtfully, shading her placid eyes from the sun with a plump, floury hand.

“Did you want to see my daughter particular, sir?”

“I'm from Rhyllan Hall,” explained John, feeling his way carefully. He noticed that at the mention of Rhyllan a faint frown came into Mrs. Lethe's eyes. “I understand that your daughter was housemaid there until lately, and I want, if I may, to ask her a few questions about—”