The Moonless Night (22 page)

“No such a thing. Just want to see if I can find out where the gold is hidden.”

“She won’t be apt to tell you.”

“She might let it slip out. No saying.”

“Don't think the hussy will be alone. She’ll have some man in her saloon.”

“I’ll peek in the windows first, and if she has, I’ll just cock my ear to the window and spy.”

Marie had spent an utterly boring day. No company but Biddy, and now even that companion was gone from her. To have to sit for hours waiting for the return of the gentlemen was too dreary to contemplate. “Let me go with you,” she said. “Certainly Madame will not be alone. You won’t be going in, and I can listen at the window as well as you.”

“How can you go? Father will be looking for you. With Biddy gone to bed, he’ll want someone to tell about his parish business.”

“He never tells me. Did you hear the name of the latest mother, by the way?”

“Effie Muldoon, down at the inn.”

“I thought so. But Father has gone out somewhere and probably won’t be back till all hours. Let me go with you, Dave,” she implored. His heart, as soft as a sponge, was persuaded. The nature of the call would necessarily change from romance to spying, but he was about equally keen on both. Marie was a good spy, too. It was she who had followed Sanford to the telescope and discovered about the message. Benson likely wouldn’t have told him a thing if Marie hadn’t been there. He was so secretive and evasive David half thought it might have been Benson himself at the Point.

“Oh, very well then, but mind you wear a dark outfit. We’ll go on horseback—quieter, and faster to get away. I can’t take my curricle if I ain’t going to the door like a gentleman.”

Within ten minutes they were headed down the road towards Madame’s cottage. They tethered their horses across the road in an orchard and proceeded on silent feet to the window, familiar to David now from his work the preceding evening. The curtains were drawn this evening, however, and drawn so closely that no view at all was possible. It began to seem their evening was a total loss, or Marie’s in any case, as David rather thought the thing to do was to make a social call. “Come around to the back,” Marie suggested before he could voice his change of plans.

The house was small, only a cottage, and the main saloon took up the whole side of the house, with a window giving on to the rear as well as the west side. The curtain at the back was not drawn, but neither was the window placed low enough to allow easy viewing. David, taller than his sister by six inches, could get a peek only and the sister could see nothing. “There’s somebody there with her, all right,” David announced. “I can see a black head. Can’t be Rawlins. He’s grizzled.”

“Rawlins is meeting with Benson. It might be Sanford, letting on he’s gone to Hazy, but really come here.”

“Could be,” David agreed, stretching his legs and neck to try to confirm it. It was no good. He could see no more than the very tip of the black head. They began looking around the yard for something to stand on. The only likely object was a wheelbarrow. Not stable, and hardly large enough for two, but stability was achieved by turning it upside down with the wheel facing the sky, and height by their standing one behind the other, Marie right against the window, David peering over her shoulder. They distinguished the caller’s identity at the same moment.

“Benson!” they said in unison, marveling a moment over his duplicity in coming here. They were soon marveling over greater marvels. He was not behaving at all like a spy trying to inveigle information out of a pretty foreigner. He was jawing at her, even shaking his finger under her nose, much as Papa did when he was in a pelter.

“Gudgeon!” David muttered. “That ain’t the way to get it out of her. He ought to be making up to her.”

Marie thought it as good a way as any other. Benson was too fastidious to pretend to like her; he was threatening, instead. Madame was not cowed by his bullying, however. She was soon shouting back at him, gesticulating in the French manner, throwing her hands about, hunching her shoulders. Benson, in his turn, replied, the anger seeming to lessen. Oh, if only they could hear! She seemed to have Benson on the run—his expression was apologetic, his hands and shoulders going up in a way that said as clear as words that he was at a loss—he didn’t know—couldn’t explain something or other. She was firing questions at him, receiving short answers. The Boltwoods were so entranced they weren’t aware of another person approaching till the horse was a yard from the corner of the building. Had barely time to crouch down from the light of the window into the concealing shade of the wall. They stared after the back of the newcomer, not recognizing him, but both realizing it was not Sanford. The nag was not spirited enough, the man’s shoulders sloping a little forward—an older man. For a whole minute David thought it was his father, and felt betrayed. The horse proceeded to the stable, and David was hit with inspiration. “We’ll nip around to the front door and watch him go in. Might learn something.”

This was done, and though they were unable to see the man, they would learn his identity as soon as they got back to the wheelbarrow at the window. Their trip around was worth their while. “Come in—he’s already here,” Madame said in an excited voice. “The worst news, George.” Not Papa, thank God! Then the door was heard to close, and it was back to the wheelbarrow, to discover the newcomer was none other than Rear Admiral Rawlins. Again there was something like an argument enacted silently before their fascinated eyes. They said nothing, knowing they would have ample time to talk it all over later. Now was the time to look and wish they could listen. Rawlins flung angry statements at Benson, who returned with angry gestures and expressions of his own. Madame was the peacemaker, pacifying both, later going for drinks.

Then the three sat on the sofa with their heads together for a long time, talking more peaceably. At length, after the Boltwoods’ eyes were stinging from strain and their necks, arms and legs stiff from craning, the party broke up. Rawlins went out the door first, Benson a step behind him, after first placing a kiss on Madame’s cheek. They exchanged a meaningful, familiar smile. It was dangerous to risk being at the window when the men went for their mounts, so they slipped away into the nearby field, holding back the million conjectures and questions that were eager to come out.

The two male callers parted at the roadside with no more than a wave, to go their separate ways. Benson would get back to the Hall before them and be wondering where they were, but this detail was only mentioned. Of much graver importance was to figure out what they had seen.

“What can it mean?” Marie asked.

“Benson didn’t actually say he was going to the naval station. Maybe it was fixed for him to meet Rawlins at Monet’s place. Well, it was—’He’s already here,’ she said.”

“How could Rawlins tell him anything, or vice versa, in front of her, when he wouldn’t discuss it before you? No, they were not discussing the message last night at all. It was something else.”

“Unless Madame’s working with them,” David thought aloud. “She says often enough she hates Bonaparte. Maybe she does.”

“The navy would never trust a Frenchwoman in such a critical case,” Marie thought. “And Benson kissed her.”

“Pooh, a peck on the cheek. She’s French—she’d expect it,” he said, and stored this French custom up for future use.

“It seems to me there is something very irregular going on here, David. Benson shouldn’t have been making such a fuss in front of Madame, jawing at her as if he were her father, such a familiar way he had with her.”

“Rawlins welcomed as ‘George.’ What could the ‘worst news’ be? Must be the message Sanford got away with, don’t you think?”

“I suppose it must be, but I’m surprised Benson should tell Madame. And I’m sure it was Benson at the Point last night, too, though he denied it.”

“I fancy it was. He don’t trust us, Marie. There’s the sum and total of it. They were both giving him the deuce for losing the message. We’re left out of it because we’re only amateurs. It’s pretty clear to me Madame is his assistant, in the thing with Rawlins all the way. A professional spy. Nothing else makes any sense. Benson was too familiar by half with her for it to mean anything else. All his letting on to hate her is just part of his cover. And the reason he’s sore at Sanford setting her up in the love nest is because he doesn’t want another amateur homing in on the case.”

“Or on his girl friend. He kissed her. Rawlins didn’t, so don’t bother letting on it is the custom.” She found herself wondering if Sanford, too, kissed Madame.

“Well, you can be sure there’s nothing fishy in it when Rear Admiral Rawlins was right there. It’s official business, right enough, and Benson don’t see fit to tell me what’s going on, after the hours I’ve sat up at the curst telescope. I’m sorry I ever thought of it. He’s just trying to be rid of me so he can get on with his own business. But I’ll tell you this: he ain’t half as wide awake as Sanford. Who was it got the message last night? Sanford. Who was it knew in a flash Madame was right at the heart of it? Sanford. I begin to wonder if it ain’t a poor idea having the chain sitting at home waiting for somebody to raise it at just the crucial minute, too. Sanford is up to anything. I mean to take him into my confidence. Only thing to do.”

All Sanford’s evil activities and views were beginning to be seen in a different light since Benson would not accept any help from amateurs. The brass buttons were innocent of being anything but stylish; the association with Madame an act of deep cunning; the views on the chain a wise precaution (though not one to be heeded). There remained only his friendship with Hazy and his lenient views on Napoleon to be dealt with, and these were by no means impossible of overcoming. He wasn’t vengeful, that was all. Bathurst himself used the word vengeful with regard to Papa’s petition, and while David had happily put his signature to that petition in good faith, he would as readily at that moment have signed one requesting Napoleon’s internment on the Isle of Wight. He was not so old as to be quite immovably set in his views.

“Next you will be saying it was well done of Sanford to have stolen Oakhurst.”

“It ain’t stealing to foreclose a mortgage that’s come due. How do you think we come to own Hecker’s little farm? Papa foreclosed the mortgage three years ago. It’s just sharp business. Imagine Benson being such a clunch as to not pay up his mortgage. He could have raised the wind, too. The fellow ain’t as bright as he should be, no denying.”

“He’s bright enough to ask where we have been when we get home,” Marie reminded him. “I’ll go up the back stairs and you can pretend you’ve been into town. Since he hasn’t been he won’t know the difference.”

“Ah—that explains it!” David said. “The first night Benson was here he went out and let on he’d gone to Plymouth, to the inn, but I was there myself and there wasn’t a sign of him. He was making his contact with Madame, way back then. He was at the inn, but up in Madame’s room. That’s why I didn’t see him.”

Marie went immediately to her room, letting David stable her mare. Shortly afterwards David came tapping at her door, “Funny thing, Benson ain’t back. Horse ain’t in the stable, and he ain’t about downstairs. Now where the deuce could he be? He headed this way, right enough.”

“Gone to the Point to get another message, maybe?”

“Very likely. I suppose I’d better go along and give him a hand. I won’t bother though,” he thought. “He won’t let me see it, and I can’t very well cosh him and take it, like Sanford did. Come to think of it, Marie, it can’t have been Benson at the Point last night. Sanford would never have hit him.”

“I think he’s been wanting to hit Benson for ages. Maybe he doesn’t know about his being a government agent. How should he know?”

“I dropped him the hint, but I hadn’t done so then, come to think of it, so that explains it. Unless—good God!”

David’s eyes widened and his ruddy cheeks paled.

“What is it?” Marie asked in alarm.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Don’t you turn into a mute on me, too. What are you thinking?”

“It’s impossible,” David answered, and turned away to walk down the hall in a trance, to consider alone in his room with his now habitual quarter glass of brandy and three-quarters of water (his preferred ratio) the impossible idea that had occurred to him. Was it conceivable that it was Lord Sanford and not Mr. Benson that had been sent down from London as a special agent?

The thought shook him to the marrow of his bones. Sanford’s arrogance in pointing out all the dangers inherent in his father’s preparations—that would account for it. But then, who was Benson? They weren’t both government agents. Hated the sight of each other. Both had arrived the same time, give or take a few hours—arrived at a time that made it possible either one might be the government spy.

So if Sanford was the real spy, who the deuce was Benson, and what was he up to? Might he not be a dangerous force working to free Boney, and himself and Marie giving him every aid? And here was he, muddling his brains with brandy urged on him by Benson! The man was out to corrupt him. With a sneer and a great heave of relief, he pushed the glass aside. He’d need all his wits to untangle this skein. What to do?

He was out the door and up to the telescope so fast his ears hummed with the wind whistling past them, to be confronted with utter desolation. Not a soul, not a horse, nor even much of a view of Billy Ruffian, though there were a few dim lights out on the water that must be it, well enough. He glanced at the sky, where the waning moon was nearing its vanishing point. He felt a tingle in his breast. The time could not be far off now. The thing to do was to get back home and put it to Sanford direct. Or Papa. But Sanford was still not back, and his father, just returned, stared at him as though he had run mad.

“That Whig, an agent from London? You’re mad. Where did you get such a notion?”

“Why is he here then?”

“He’s Bathurst’s godson, and Biddy has taken the idea Marie might get him. His asking them to Wight looks like it. A very eligible parti in every way, barring his politics. You mustn’t fall under his influence, Son, to be setting up any plan to cut my chain.”