The Quiet Gentleman (20 page)

Her heart was beating uncomfortably fast, but she knew her presence to be safeguard enough, and she had not meant to raise the alarm.

The woodwork creaked; one of the sections of the wainscot was sliding behind another, and the lamplight showed a hand grasping the edge of it.

The aperture was widening slowly, but the lamp had been turned too low for its light to be thrown into the cavity revealed by the removal of the panel. There was a moment’s pause, which Miss Morville found singularly nerve-racking, and then the silence was broken by a voice, raised little above a whisper, which uttered urgently: ‘St Erth!’

The grip was removed from Miss Morville’s wrist. ‘Come in, Martin!’ the Earl said calmly.

Martin bent, and stepped over the skirting-board into the room. He started when Miss Morville moved from her station by the shadowed bed into the light, and stammered: ‘I didn’t know! I thought –’ He broke off, shrugging. ‘It’s of no consequence. St Erth, I
had
to see you! I beg pardon if I startled you, but I was determined to have speech with you!’

‘Where does that passage lead?’ interrupted the Earl, nodding towards the cavity.

‘It isn’t a passage: it’s only the secret stair! It leads to the cupboard by the door out to the old bowling-green. You must know it!’

‘You are mistaken. I neither knew, nor was I told, that a secret stair led directly to my room.’

Miss Morville moved silently to the door into the dressing-room, which stood ajar, and closed it, and then went to turn up the lamp.

‘I suppose you were thought to know of it,’ Martin said. ‘What’s the odds? I want –’

‘Who does know of it?’

‘Why, everyone!’ said Martin impatiently. ‘There’s no secret about it nowadays! No one uses it, of course –’

‘That does not seem to be true.’

‘Well, I mean in the general way! I had to see you!’

Miss Morville had trimmed the lamp, and its golden light grew stronger. Looking up, she now perceived that Martin was looking haggard, and unusually white. She made no comment, but picked up one of the spare pillows, and carried it to the bed. ‘Let me put this behind you, my lord,’ she said. ‘It will be better for you not to support yourself on your elbow.’

He thanked her, and leaned back, with a sigh of relief. She glanced at Martin, and said composedly: ‘Your brother is still weak, and should not be talking at this hour. Pray do not prolong your visit!’

‘I’ve no wish to do him any harm – though I daresay you won’t believe that!’

She did not answer, but sat down beside the fire. He scowled at her, but she returned his look with one of her wide, direct stares. Flushing, he turned from her to his half-brother.

‘Tell me!’ said the Earl. ‘Why do you choose to enter my room by a secret stair rather than by the door?’

‘Choose! They will not let me come near you!’

‘Who will not let you?’

‘Theo – Ulverston – that damned groom of yours!’

‘Indeed! But has a sentry been posted at my door?’

‘No! Not at your door, but at mine!’ Martin said bitterly. ‘Chard is sitting outside my room. The only wonder is that he has not locked me in!’

‘Dear me! How, may I ask, did you contrive to slip past him unnoticed? Or is there also a secret way into your room?’

‘No, there is not! I climbed out of the window. I tell you, I had to see you!’

‘Why, Martin?’

‘They think I tried to kill you!’

‘Have they said so?’

‘Not in so many words, but the questions they have asked me – the way they look at me! I’m not a fool! I know what they think! They say my gun and my shot-belt were found where – where it happened, and that I had rounds of ball in my belt! I had not! It is a damned lie, St Erth! Good God, what should I want with ball when all I went for was an accursed pair of kestrels, and perhaps a pigeon or two?’

‘Did you get the kestrels?’ enquired Gervase.

‘No. I never got a sight of them.’

‘Or a pigeon?’

‘No!’

‘Did you not fire your gun at all?’

‘Yes, at a rabbit,’ Martin muttered. ‘Oh, we have had all that out, never fear! The gun has been fired, and I don’t deny it! I bagged a rabbit, but where it is now I don’t know! I can’t produce it!
I never fired at you!
’

The Earl’s head lay back against the supporting pillow; from under drooping eyelids he was watching every change in Martin’s face. ‘Martin, why did you run away?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t run away!’ Martin exclaimed.

‘Hush! Not so loud! My valet is sleeping in the next room. Where, then, have you been?’

‘I don’t know!’ He saw his brother’s brows lift, and added, in a goaded tone: ‘Ask Chard! He will tell you fast enough! It was some village short of Wisbech where he picked me up: I don’t know its name!’

‘I hope you mean to tell me what he was doing there, for I have not the remotest guess.’

‘I’ll tell you!’ Martin threw at him. ‘He was set on by your friend Ulverston to look for me on the road to King’s Lynn! Ulverston believed I should be found making for the nearest port! God, how I have kept my hands from Ulverston’s throat I don’t know!’

‘Yes, I remember now that Lucy told me that,’ Gervase said thoughtfully.

‘I was trying to get to Stanyon, not to the coast!’ Martin said, taking an impetuous step nearer to the bed.

‘That, also, he foretold,’ murmured Gervase.

Martin recoiled. ‘I might have spared myself the pains of coming to you! You won’t believe me any more than he or Theo do! Very well! Have me arrested for murder!’

‘But I am not dead,’ Gervase said, smiling faintly. ‘What is it that I shan’t believe?’

‘I was kidnapped!’ said Martin belligerently.

Miss Morville, who had been gazing into the fire, apparently divorced from this interchange, raised her head, and looked curiously at him.

‘Now tell me you don’t believe me! I expect that!’

‘Not at all. Where, when, and how?’

Martin cast him a sullen glance. ‘I don’t know when – except that it was not long after I had shot the rabbit, and I’ve no notion when that may have been, except that it can’t have been a great while before you were fired at. I’d had no sport; I thought I might as well try for a brace of wood-pigeons, but you know what they are! There’s no getting them, unless you lie-up, once they’ve been alarmed! I crouched down behind a thicket, to wait. I suppose someone stalked me: I don’t know! All I know is that I was struck a stunning blow from behind. I
do
know that, but nothing more, until I came to myself, and how much later that was I’ve no notion!’

There was a short silence. ‘And your spaniel?’ said the Earl.

‘Not with me,’ Martin answered, colouring. He raised his eyes. ‘He had run a thorn into his foot, and was dead lame! I would not take him. Ask Hickling if that’s not true! Oh, yes! I know what you are thinking! Hickling would tell any lie to oblige me, would he not?’

‘I don’t know. Would he?’

‘I daresay! This is the truth!’

‘Very well: go on!’

‘I tell you, I don’t know what happened! I didn’t come to myself till I was being taken off somewhere, in a cart, or something. I couldn’t see: I was trussed up, and gagged, and there was a sack over my head – not that I cared, for my head was aching fit to split, and I cared for nothing,
then
, except being jolted so much that I think I went off into another swoon. I don’t remember that, but I
do
remember feeling devilish bad. And then I wasn’t in a vehicle, but lying on the ground somewhere. It might have been a cow-byre: it smelled like it, but I couldn’t see, or move, and I don’t know. I don’t even know how long I was there: hours and hours, I think! I suppose I slept part of the time. I must have, because I woke up with a start when someone began to haul me up. And then there was more of that curst jolting, and being hauled out of the cart again, and rolling down and down and down!’

‘Rolling down where?’ asked the Earl.

‘It was a sand-pit, but I didn’t know that at the time.’

‘Oh! And who rescued you from the sand-pit?’

‘No one. I managed to get free. If I hadn’t, I might be there now, for it was miles from anywhere, and disused, I think.’

‘But how did you contrive to free yourself then, when you had been unable to do so before?’ asked Miss Morville, quite mystified.

‘I suppose the cord must have frayed,’ Martin said, hesitatingly. ‘Or perhaps it worked loose – no, that wasn’t it, because when I found I could move my arms at last, I strained and strained, and the cord broke, so I think it must have frayed, or was weak in one place. Look!’ He thrust his sleeve up, and showed a bruised and chafed forearm.

‘I will give you some arnica for it, if you would like it,’ said Miss Morville kindly.

He swung round to face her. ‘I don’t want it! You think it’s all lies, don’t you?’

‘Oh, no! Only one should never allow oneself to be carried away by exciting stories, and I am bound to observe that it would not be so very difficult to inflict such a bruise with one’s own hands. I daresay it all happened exactly as you have described, but one can readily understand why it was that Theo and Lord Ulverston would not believe you.’

‘I am much obliged to you! Why don’t you say you think I’m a murderer, and be done with it?’

‘Martin,’ interrupted Gervase, ‘why were you stunned, kept in durance vile, and finally rolled into a sand-pit?’

‘Good God, if I knew that – ! I suppose some desperate fellow meant to rob me!’

‘And were you robbed?’ asked Gervase.

‘No, because I had no money on me! A man don’t carry money in his pockets when he goes out shooting!’

‘Just what I was thinking,’ agreed Gervase. ‘It does not seem to have occurred to that desperate fellow. Do you think he may have rolled you into the sand-pit in a pet at finding you so little worth his trouble?’

‘No. It wasn’t robbery, of course. I see that now, but at the time – Well, I know it sounds smoky, but it’s true! I never thought about not having any money until I got out of that sand-pit.
Then
I remembered I hadn’t as much as a groat in my pocket!’

‘Was that why you decided to come back?’

Martin flushed. ‘I always meant to come back! It’s why I didn’t reach Stanyon till past ten o’clock tonight! At least, it is, in part! I can tell you, I didn’t feel so stout when I first got free! I couldn’t stand, and my head was aching till I could scarcely see out of my eyes, and I had such a thirst – ! As soon as my legs would bear me, all I cared for was to get out of that pit, and find some water! Well, I did get out, and I had no more idea of where I was than – than anything, but there was a wood quite close, and I thought very likely there might be a stream near it, and so there was! And then I – I –’

‘You?’

‘I went to sleep!’ Martin said. ‘I think I must have slept for hours, because it was very little past dawn when I got that sack off my head, and it was past noon when I woke up, judging from the sun. I felt better then, and I set out to get to the nearest village. Such a figure as I must have looked! I could see they took me for a common vagrant, at the alehouse. They had no post there, of course, and the landlord said he had no horse I might hire, but I might be accommodated at Guyhirne, which was not far.’

‘And were you?’

‘No. That is –’ Martin stole a glance from his brother’s face to Miss Morville’s. ‘I didn’t go there. I know this was folly, but – I fell in with some country-fellow driving a waggon, and he took me up, and
that
was when I learned what had happened to you, St Erth!’

‘Learned it from a waggoner?’

‘I might have learned it from a dozen such, I daresay! Some carrier who was at Cheringham this morning spread the story everywhere he went! The waggoner told me that you had been murdered and that
I
had disappeared, and was being everywhere looked for! Of course, I might have guessed it wasn’t as bad as that, but – well, I –’

‘Took fright?’

‘I didn’t know what to do!’ Martin blurted out. ‘I thought if anyone recognized me – or guessed who I was – I should find myself hustled off to gaol –
I
, Martin Frant! All I could think of to do was to get back here without being seen, and – and discover how it was, and think what I must do. But that fellow, Chard, was hunting for me, and I
had
been seen, of course, though no one knew me, all that way from Stanyon, and in such a rig! But I suppose when he described me, and what I was wearing, those curst bumpkins set him on my track. He came up with me in that village – driving
my
gig, too! – and – and then I heard how it was, and he brought me home as though I had been a felon, and he my gaoler, bringing me up to the Assize, or something! And after that, there was Theo –
and
Ulverston! – not believing a word I said, and declaring I should not see you! But I had to see you, and
tell
you – !’

Miss Morville, who had been watching the weary face against the pillow, said: ‘Well, Martin, now that you have done so, I shall be very much obliged to you if you will go away again, and leave his lordship to sleep! There is nothing more to be done tonight, you know, and I daresay, if you wish it, your brother will see you again tomorrow.’

She wished then that she had not said this, for the Earl moved his head in a gesture of dissent, and his lips framed the one word: ‘No.’

Martin saw it too, and said sharply: ‘St Erth, you can’t mean – St Erth, you’ll let me come and see you tomorrow, surely!’

‘No. You can have nothing more to say to me. Keep away from this room! When I am on my feet again – we will see.’

A frightened look, almost one of panic, came into Martin’s face. He started forward involuntarily, exclaiming: ‘Gervase, you don’t mean to accuse me of this? You can’t think I would commit
murder
?’

A queer little smile flitted across the Earl’s eyes. ‘You haven’t murdered me.’

‘I never tried to! You must believe me! We’re – we’re half-brothers! Only think of the scandal!’

‘I have thought of it. I told Theo I had caught a glimpse of a thick-set fellow, dressed in homespuns, hiding in the thicket.’ Martin drew a shuddering sigh. ‘I knew you could not –
did
you see such a fellow?’

‘I saw no one.’

‘Are you sure of that?’ Martin asked, frowning down at him. ‘Because – Well, never mind!’ He caught Miss Morville’s eye, and said: ‘Oh, very well! I’m going! Only if you are afraid to let me enter your room, and I am to have Chard standing guard over me in this way –’