Let Him Lie (11 page)

“Well—to Bates, the butler.” Agnes spoke angrily. A little spot of red appeared in each wan cheek.

“Only to Bates?”

“As far as I can remember.”

“Please try to remember, Mrs. Molyneux. The question of time is important.”

“But I've told you I don't know what the time was when I left the house! I put on my galoshes. I didn't hurry. I went out. I walked slowly through the garden. I was thinking about planting some shrubs, and where to put them. And when I got to the orchard I saw Robert falling. And I heard a shot.” Agnes's voice had sunk to a dry whisper. “I don't
know
what time it was.”

Her large blue eyes looked from face to face round the table and lit on Sir Henry Blundell. She gave a little sob. Jeanie noticed the contraction of that gentleman's jaw, his almost indignant glance at the coroner, his little frown. When Mr. Perrott apologetically released Agnes from her ordeal, Sir Henry went instantly around to her and suggested that she should leave the court. Assisted by Tamsin Wills, she went.

Jeanie found her heart beating very fast when her own name was called. But, perhaps intimidated by Sir Henry, the coroner seemed, she thought, to let her off lightly. She explained how, two minutes or so after hearing the shot, she had seen Agnes in the lane talking to Myfanwy Peel, how Agnes had fainted and how Jeanie and Sarah had gone to her help and thus been brought to knowledge of Robert Molyneux's death. As she sat down, she saw Myfanwy Peel look with a slow cautious glance out of the corner of her eye at the coroner. There was terror, it seemed to Jeanie, hidden below her look. And well there might be, after her antics with that revolver! Jeanie looked forward with lively curiosity to hearing her explanation of what she was doing with the weapon.

She was, however, disappointed. Myfanwy Peel was not called on to give evidence. Neither was Peter Johnson. It seemed strange to Jeanie that these two should not be called upon to explain their somewhat unusual actions on the day of Molyneux's death, until it occurred to her that it was precisely because they were under suspicion that they were for the time being spared by the police. Against one or other of them, perhaps, the police were quietly building up a case, waiting until it was complete before the evidence of the victim, with its struggling shifts and plunging lies, should serve to bind him only tighter in the net.

It was, on the whole, a dull brief affair, the inquest, leaving, it seemed to Jeanie, more hidden than it revealed. There was but one dramatic moment, when the whole court rustled into attention and the pencils of the reporters flew joyfully over their flapping note-books. This occurred during the evidence given by William Fone. Jeanie, who guessed the nature of the evidence he was to give, hoped very much that he would see fit to suppress some of his more unorthodox reflections on the death of his friend. She rather liked the man. And by the effect on herself she reckoned the effect on this most hidebound of gatherings should the queer fellow repeat in public his opinion that Molyneux's death was for the good of the community. She stirred uneasily as the coroner addressed him. But she soon saw that she need not worry. William Fone confined himself to answering with admirable precision the coroner's questions, which seemed directed towards establishing the direction of the shot which killed Robert Molyneux. 

“Then at the time the shot was fired,” said Mr. Perrott, examining a large-scale plan of Cleedons which lay on the table before him, “it would seem that the deceased was facing north-east, almost towards the house.”

“He was.”

“Your eyesight is good, Mr. Fone?”

“Perfectly, so far as I know.”

“You saw his face?”

“Distinctly. His back was at first towards me. He turned his head and the upper part of his body—”

“In which direction?”

“Towards his right. His right arm, holding the pruning-saw, swung round. I saw his face plainly. Then I heard the shot. And I saw Molyneux fall from the ladder. I sat still for a minute or two in the window-seat. Then I stood up. It was twenty-three minutes to four. I went home.”

Perhaps the coroner had been coached by the police, for he did not break the ensuing startled silence by asking why Mr. Fone had not gone to his friend's assistance instead of going home. Perhaps the police, for reasons of their own, did not at this point want William Fone to be harried. All Mr. Perrott said, after a pause in which he examined his sketch-plan again, was:

“Then there seems no doubt that at the time he was shot the deceased was facing north-east. He was shot in the left temple. It seems certain, then, that the shot which killed him came from the north-west. What is this building under the north-west boundary of the orchard? Oh, I see it is marked! The lambing-shed.”

It was here that the sensation occurred. A young woman in a green tweed coat stood up at the end of the table looked towards the door with a face which seemed faintly to reflect the hue of her coat, stammered loudly:

“I—I—Excuse me!” and lurching past the knees of people seated near the table with that disregard of politeness and personal dignity peculiar to those about to faint or be sick, made for the door. A police officer escorted her outside.

“Was that Marjorie Dasent?” murmured Jeanie to Peter. “Who would have thought a face as pink as hers could ever go as green?”

The inquest was finally adjourned for ten days. A flat, unsatisfying ending to a curiously and, Jeanie thought, designedly superficial inquiry. There were, however, those who had not found it dull, and to whom its adjournment seemed only to dangle the sword of Damocles over their heads.

As, in Peter Johnson's company, she emerged from the yard into the road, Jeanie saw walking ahead of her towards their waiting car Myfanwy Peel and her exotic partner. She heard Myfanwy mutter furiously:

“You
had
to say that, of course! You had to give me away!”

“Give you away!” echoed her companion in light astonished deprecation. “My dear Miffie, I only said I had a revolver. It happens to be true.”

“That's all you think about! Priggish ass.”

Mr. Agatos scratched his head. He did not seem much disturbed.

“No,” he objected tranquilly, opening the door of their low-built shiny car. “But I know when it is no good telling lies. Also, from what I hear, it is no secret you have been going round with my revolver.”

Jeanie greeted Myfanwy as she and Peter went by, but Myfanwy seemed to notice her as little as if she had been a stray sheep. She continued to objurgate Agatos.

“You're a beast! A beast!”

“We will go to Gloucester and see a nice film,” said Mr. Agatos soothingly, “and then you will feel better. Only you should really say good afternoon to ladies that say good afternoon to you. Did you not know?”

“Beast! Beast!” still more furiously uttered Myfanwy. The door slammed. The car overtook Peter and Jeanie and disappeared around the bend of the road.

“Rum couple,” commented Jeanie, but Peter was not at the moment interested in rum couples.

“If the police don't arrest me soon, I shall go mad.”

“Oh, Peter, don't be absurd!”

“I am not absurd!” cried he angrily. Jeanie, who saw no reason why she and Peter should emulate Agatos and Myfanwy, said nothing.

Well, this is it,” said Sarah Molyneux indifferently. She kicked the crumbling edge of a rabbit-hole, and her lack-lustre glance wandered over the bell-barrow. They were standing at the outer edge of the vallum. Grim's Grave, a tumulus of unusually regular outline, rose before them thirty feet high from the bottom of the five-foot ditch, gaining a singular impressiveness from the circle of young trees which stood upon its summit. Gaunt thistles and dry brown foxglove-stalks grew on its slopes, rabbit-holes mined the grassy surface and the scars made by old felled trees showed here and there in thicker tufts of coarser grass.

“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.