The Key (8 page)

AS HE AND Janice came into the hall at exactly half-past four, a buzz of voices proceeding from the drawing-room informed them that Miss Sophy. was having a tea-party. She had, in fact, been quite busy asking people to tea before Janice got her invitation.

They entered upon an early Edwardian tea. The table decked with an embroidered cloth, supported a massive tray and full panoply of silver. In a three-tiered metal cake stand to the right of the table plates of Royal Worcester china offered microscopic sandwiches of fish paste, lettuce, and nasturtium leaves. On the left a similar cake-basket carried out in wicker-work supported gingerbread biscuits, Marie biscuits, and rock buns – a wartime product made with egg powder. Behind the table in a large upright chair, Miss Sophy beamed upon her guests and poured out a great many cups of very weak tea. She received Garth and Janice with enthusiasm.

‘There you are, my dears! And just in time for tea – though it’s so weak it wouldn’t matter if it did stand. Florence says we are using a great deal more than our ration, but with tea you can always put in more water and make it go round like that. I only wish you could do that with eggs – such a convenience. Garth, I don’t think you’ve met Mr Everton. He has the most delightful hens – they really never stop laying.’

Mr Everton, round-cheeked and ruddy, bowed an acknowledgement and said, ‘That is because I know how to manage them.’

On his other side Mrs Mottram said plaintively, ‘I wish you’d tell me how you do it.’

Before he could answer, Miss Sophy struck in.

‘Mrs Mottram – my nephew, Major Albany.’

Garth got a full roll of the blue eyes.

‘Oh, I’ve heard so much about you! You will find us very stupid down here – always talking about food – but it’s so difficult, isn’t it? I’ve got six hens, but we haven’t had an egg for a fortnight. Now Mr Everton—’

Mr Everton beamed upon her.

‘You have no method. Everyone thinks that method is not necessary with the hen, and then you are surprised that the hen also is unmethodical. But I tell you it is your own fault. She is careless because you are careless. You must set her a good example. Hot mash not later than eight o’clock in the morning. Do you do that?’

Mrs Mottram gazed at him in a soulful manner.

‘Oh, no.’

‘Then you should.’

‘Should I?’

‘Certainly you should. Look, I will write you out a diet-sheet, and you shall keep to it. After a fortnight you shall tell me whether you are still getting no eggs.’

They moved off together. Garth took a cup of tea and a cakestand to Miss Doncaster, who helped herself to a nasturtium sandwich and said she disapproved of tea-parties in wartime. He sat down beside her and prepared to make himself agreeable.

‘I’m so sorry to hear that Miss Mary Anne is such an invalid.’

Miss Lucy Ellen helped herself to another sandwich.

‘She has every attention,’ she said. ‘If you ask me, I think I am the one to be pitied. If I go up and down stairs once I go up and down half a dozen times in an hour. We have turned the front bedroom into a sitting-room, and she is wheeled in there from her room. She can see everyone who is passing, and we have a great many visitors – too many, if you ask me – tracking up and down the stairs and bringing a lot of dirt into the house. Well, with only one maid, I’m the one that has to clear it up. I’m sure I never sit down. Are you here for long? I shouldn’t have thought you could be spared from your duties. If you ask me, I should say that everyone was getting too much leave. There’s Frederick Bush — his son was home for seven days last week.’

‘And now it’s me. I know – we ought to be working day and night with wet towels round our heads. We really do sometimes.’

‘I don’t believe it. Things would get done if you did. If you ask me, there’s too much idling and sloppy talk.’

They weren’t getting anywhere. He had been dragged away from Miss Mary Anne. He made a determined attempt to get back.

‘You say your sister sees a lot of people. I suppose she knew Mr Harsch?’

Miss Doncaster sniffed.

‘If you could call it knowing. He was wrapped up in his experiments. I always said he’d blow himself up some day.’

Garth permitted himself a faint tinge of malice.

‘But he didn’t, did he?’

Miss Doncaster eyed him with the dislike which her features were so well qualified to express. She had the long, sharp nose and reddish eyes of a ferret, and the thinnest lips that Garth had ever seen. The fact that she never opened them far enough to allow anyone to see her teeth had given rise to a legend which had terrified his infancy. It was said, and was possibly still believed amongst the young of Bourne, that she had real ferret’s teeth, and that if she caught you alone after dark almost anything might happen.

‘I can’t say I see much difference between being blown up and being shot,’ she said tartly.

Garth went on trying to find out whether Miss Mary Anne could have been listening in on the party line at half-past six on Tuesday and who, if anyone, had visited her that evening, but the going was too hard, he got nowhere. Miss Doncaster appeared to disapprove of him even more strongly that she had done when he was in his teens. He gave it up, and being unable to go away and leave her stranded, he found this disapproval, as it were, radiating out to embrace the entire population of Bourne. The only person for whom she had a good word was Mr Everton, whom she conceded to be good-natured, though she immediately qualified this by remarking that the dividing line between good nature and folly was a fine one, and, ‘If men knew how very foolish they appear when they, allow a silly young woman to twist them round her little finger, it would at any rate preserve them from exposing themselves to ridicule in company’ – the remark being concluded by one of her most pronounced sniffs.

‘I expect you find Sophy very much aged,’ was her next remark.

Garth was astonished at his own anger. Some of it seemed to come back with him out of that past in which he had been a frightened little boy and Aunt Sophy one of the bulwarks of his world. He said with careful politeness, ‘Do you know, I don’t think she’s changed a bit for as long as I can remember.’

The ferret nose twitched and sniffed.

‘Not very observant, are you? Breaking up – that’s what Sophy is.’

After which she passed rapidly by way of the rector’s Extreme Views to the incompetence of Dr Edwards – ‘His own wife being a complete invalid is hardly a recommendation’; the decline of manners and morals amongst the young, exemplified by pointed references to Mrs Mottram; and the generally unsatisfactory condition of everybody and everything. He heard about the triplets all over again – ‘Most improvident.’ He heard about the intransigent behaviour of young Podlington, who had married Lucy Pincott and had obtained the Military Medal, by what means Miss Doncaster was unable to say, but it had had a most unhappy effect. Returning on leave, he had accosted her in the churchyard with an unseemly, ‘Hello, Miss Doncaster, how are you getting along?’ And Lucy, hanging on his arm, goggling her eyes right out of her head, as if no one had ever had a medal before – ‘And now, if you please, he is to get a commission! I really cannot think what the world is coming to!’

At this point Miss Sophy saved his life by calling him over to be introduced to Dr Edwards. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Janice handing Marie biscuits to Miss Doncaster and being pinned down.

When the tea-party broke up he walked home with her.

‘I’d forgotten what a terror she was,’ he said. ‘What do you suppose she’s saying about us?’

Janice, having been warned against attributing serious intentions to idle young men whose only idea was to amuse themselves, had a pretty fair idea. She blushed slightly and becomingly, and said, ‘I am a village maiden whose head is being turned, and you are a gay deceiver.’

There was something about the way she said it that tickled him – a delicately dry inflection, a faint, demure sparkle. He burst out laughing and said, ‘She didn’t warn you!’

‘She did.’

He went on laughing.

‘She’s a museum piece, you know.’

Rather to his surprise, Janice flared up.

‘Then I wish someone would lock her up in a museum.’ Her foot tapped the ground and she faced round upon him. ‘It’s all very well for you, to laugh! You don’t happen to live here – I do!’ Then, before he could speak, ‘Did you find out anything about Tuesday? You were talking to her for simply ages.’

‘You mean she was talking to me. And I didn’t find out a thing. What about you?’

Janice looked doubtful.

‘I didn’t like to ask questions, because they might have been the same as yours, and once she thought we were up to anything everyone in Bourne would know it too. But I did find out one person who was there on Tuesday evening, only—’

‘Who was it?’

‘Bush.’

‘Frederick Bush?

She nodded.

‘He came in to move some shelves out of the attic and put them up in the sitting-room – you know he does all that sort of odd job. Miss Mary Anne wanted to have her Spode teacups where she could look at them instead of being put away in the dining-room cupboard. Miss Doncaster told me all about it because she’s feeling very angry with all the Pincotts just now on account of Ernest Podlington. And as Mrs Bush is a Pincott, of course Bush can’t do anything right. She said he had taken twice as long as he need over the shelves and didn’t get done until half-past seven, which was very inconvenient because of supper. And Miss Mary Anne had talked too much, which was very selfish and inconsiderate of her, because she knows quite well that it gives her a bad night, and when she has a bad night, Lucy Ellen has one too. And it was all Bush’s fault.’

Garth said, ‘Gosh!’

GARTH CAME SLOWLY back. When he reached the village he took the shorter way and came to the bottom of the Rectory garden by way of the Church Cut. Someone had cleared away the broken glass. As he was wondering who it might have been, Cyril Bond emerged crab-like from Meadowcroft.

‘I made a good job of it, I reckon. I’m a Scout, so I thought, “Suppose someone was to cut himself,” and I picked it all up and put it in the ditch. I reckon that was a good deed all right.’

Garth laughed. There was something artless about the creature.

‘I reckon it was.’

Cyril edged nearer.

‘Was you at the inquest?’

Garth nodded.

‘What did they say?’ His a’s were all i’s, his London twang pure Stepney.

‘They said it was suicide.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was found in the church with the door locked and his key in his pocket.’

Cyril gave a scornful laugh.

‘I reckon there was another key all right, mister.’

‘Oh, yes – there are three other keys. The Rector has one, Mr Bush the sexton has one, and Miss Brown who plays the organ has the third. They were all accounted for.’

Cyril said ‘Coo!’ And then, ‘They don’t ’arf believe things, those blokes at inquests. I could tell them something if I liked. And would they believe me? Not ’arf, they wouldn’t! I’m not a clergyman, nor a sexton, nor Miss Brown.’

Garth was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He eyed the flushed cheeks and bright blue eyes and enquired,

‘What could you tell them?’

Cyril came closer.

‘Something about a key.’

‘Look here – do you mean that?’

‘Coo – I don’t tell lies! Scouts don’t. It isn’t ’arf inconvenient sometimes, but it’s better in the long run, because people believe you. See?’

Garth saw.

‘All right – what do you know about a key?’

The boy shuffled with his feet.

‘I dunno as I’d better say.’

‘If you really know anything—’

‘O – w, I know all right.’

‘Then I think you ought to say.’

Cyril appeared to consider this. He had obviously spent a happier hour and a half since tea-time in getting as much mud on to his person as possible. His knees were plastered, his hands and arms bedaubed, and his face well smeared. In spite of this he contrived a serious, even a dependable look.

‘If I was to say, I couldn’t take it back afterwards?’

‘No.’

‘If anyone was to get into trouble along of what I said, and it come to a trial, I’d have to get up and say it in front of a judge?’

‘Yes.’

‘And have my picture in the papers? Coo! That wouldn’t ’arf be something to write home about!’ His face lit up with bright anticipation and then was overcast again. ‘I reckon I’d get into trouble though.’

‘Why?’

Cyril edged up another six inches or so.

‘Well, it’s like this. I’m supposed to be in by half-past seven. I gets my supper and a wash, and I’m supposed to be in bed by eight.’ There was a heavy accent on the ‘supposed’.

‘But you don’t always go – is that it?’

‘Well, it’s like this. I have my wash and I go to my room—’

‘But you don’t always get into bed?’

Cyril scuffed with his feet. Garth laughed again.

‘All right – I see. And Tuesday was one of the nights you didn’t go to bed?’

He got a look, at first deprecating but which changed to something uncommonly like a wink.

‘What did you do?’ said Garth.

Cyril kicked so hard as to endanger the toe of his shoe.

‘I reckon I’ll get into trouble,’ he said.

‘Probably. But I think you’d better tell me all the same. What did you do?’

There was another of those sidelong glances, and then, ‘I got out of the window.’

‘How did you manage that?

Having taken the plunge, Cyril became extremely animated.

‘See that window there on the side of the house? That’s my room, and if you get out on the sill and hang with your hands, it ain’t so far to drop on to that bit of roof that sticks out over the libery. There’s a big branch of a tree comes over, and you can get a good holt of it and come along hand over hand and climb down. I’ve done it ever so many times and I haven’t never been caught once.’

Garth considered it a very sporting effort. He knew the tree, the window, and the distance. He wasn’t at all sure that he could have pulled it off at Cyril’s age. He nodded and said, ‘Well, you climbed down the tree. What happened after that?’

‘I larked about a bit, playing Red Indians, crawling up to the house like it was a stockade and surrounding it. Coo – it wasn’t ’arf exciting!’

‘What sort of time was it?’

‘Well, it wasn’t far off a quarter to nine when I got out of the window. You can hear the church clock strike, and it had gone the quarter to.’

‘All right – go on.’

‘Well, after a bit it stopped being dark because of the moon coming up, so I couldn’t go on playing Indians near the house in case of anyone looking out of a window and seeing me, so I thought I’d come out here and make a ambush, and if anyone come by I could play I’d scalped them.’

‘And did anyone come?’

‘Oh, boy – didn’t they just! The lady come first – out of this door.’ He laid his hand on the jamb against which Garth had been leaning.

‘What lady?’ He tried not to speak too quickly.

‘The lady that lives with the old lady at your house – Miss Brown. You know – the lady that plays the organ in church on a Sunday. I was down in the ditch there right opposite, lying down flat, and I reckon if I’d had a bow-an-arrow I could have shot her dead. Well, she stays there with the door half open – that’s when I reckon I could have shot her – and then she comes right out. And then the gentleman comes, and he says, “Where are you going?” and he says her name. It sounded awfully funny to me – something like suet.’

‘Suet?’

Cyril nodded.

‘You know – in a packet – Atora, like my auntie used to send me for to the grocer’s’.

Garth restrained himself.

‘Medora?’

‘That’s right! It isn’t ’arf a funny kind of name. “Where are you going, Medora?” he says. I reckon I could have shot him too.’

‘Yes – go on. What did she say?’

‘She says it hasn’t got anything to do with him, and he says oh, yes it has, and what’s that she’s got in her hand. And she says, “Nothing”. And he says, “Oh, yes, you have, and you’ll ’and it over to me! You’re not using any keys to let yourself into the church tonight. If you want to listen to him playing you can stand out here, and if you want to talk to him you can do it in the day time. ’And over that there key!” ’

‘And did she?’

‘I’ll say she did! He’d got her by the arm, twisting it like, and the key fell down. And she says “Oh!” like she was going to cry and pulls her ’and away and back into your garden and shuts the door, and the gentleman he picks up the key and puts it in his pocket and goes off.’

‘Which way did he go?’

An extremely dirty finger pointed in the direction of the church.

‘Sure?’

‘Ow, yes!’

‘Who was it?’ said Garth. ‘Do you know?’

Cyril looked surprised.

‘Course I do!’

‘Who was it?’

‘The one as they call the professor.’

Here was something with a vengeance. Garth said, ‘Are you sure?’

Cyril nodded emphatically.

‘Coo – I wouldn’t say a thing like that if I wasn’t! It was him all right. Ever so angry he was – put me in mind of Boris Banks in Murder at Midnight. It was a smashing picture – he didn’t ’arf carry on. You see, he’d murdered a lady—’

Garth recalled him firmly.

‘Cut all that and get back to Tuesday! What makes you sure who it was you saw?’

Cyril looked obstinate and a little dashed.

‘Well, mister, I seen him. I told you as how the moon was up – bright as bright it was. It was him all right. Lives in the house up at the top of the lane where the field is with the ruings. The gentleman that was shot, he lived there too.’

Garth whistled.

‘Well, if you’re sure, you’re sure. But you mustn’t say you are if you’re not. It’s – very important.’

Cyril nodded again.

‘Coo – I know that! It was him all right – name of Madoc.’

Garth stood there a moment. Then he put a hand on Cyril’s shoulder.

‘While he was there – while he was talking to Miss Brown, could you hear anything else – anything from the church?’

‘Only the other gentleman playing the organ.’

‘You did hear that?’

‘Ow, yes!’

‘All right – go on. What happened after that?’

Cyril stared.

‘Nothing. I went back in.’

‘How do you get back?’

‘Up the tree, mister, and a bit higher up – then if you crawl along, there’s a branch you can get hold of that brings you down where you can swing on to the window ledge.’

Garth thought of his Aunt Sophy’s feelings. He remembered performances of his own which included sliding down the outer slope of the roof and finishing up with his heels in the guttering, yet the human boy survived. He laughed and said, ‘Sounds quite a stunt. Then you went to bed, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t hear anything after that?’

Cyril shook his head regretfully.

‘I went to sleep. If I hadn’t I might have heard the shot. I don’t ’arf want to kick myself when I think about it. I didn’t hear nothing. Oh boy – I wish I had!’