The Witch's Daughter (7 page)

‘Now, Father …’ Mrs Tarbutt gave him a reproachful look. ‘Fancy filling them up with that nonsense.’ She said, to Tim, ‘They’re not very sociable, up at Luinpool. The little lass doesn’t mix with other children. So they think she’s strange.’

‘That’s all, is it?’ Mr Tarbutt winked at Tim. ‘Mrs Tarbutt’s town bred. She comes from Edinburgh.’

‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,’ Mrs Tarbutt said primly.

‘Town people only believe what they see under their noses,’ Mr Tarbutt said. ‘No respect for the supernatural.’

‘Certainly
I
haven’t any,’ Mrs Tarbutt said, with a little toss of her head and a smile for her husband, whose teasing she enjoyed. ‘I’ve got better things to think about.’ Then the smile left her face and she looked suddenly worried. ‘Such as Mr Jones. Here it is, tea time and no sign of him—no sign since last night.’

Mr Tarbutt smiled. ‘He’s all right. I told you not to worry. He probably went off early this morning.’

Mrs Tarbutt looked thoughtful. ‘His bed was mussed up, as if he’d slept in it, but, d’you know, I wondered if he
had
? His wash basin was tidy and he usually makes a fine old mess, shaving in the morning.’

‘If he went off early, he wouldn’t bother to shave,’ Mr
Tarbutt
said. ‘I’ve got an idea he may have gone shooting with Campbell. He was saying he thought he’d be going one day soon, after deer. Maybe he offered to take Mr Jones—they were thick last night, in the bar.’

‘It’s odd he didn’t tell us though, isn’t it?’ Mrs Tarbutt said.

‘Odd. But not odd enough to worry. He’ll turn up before dark, I daresay.’ Mr Tarbutt grinned broadly. ‘Unless the fairies have taken him,’ he said.

‘W
HAT ARE YOU
doing, Tim?’ Janey asked.

‘Thinking.’

‘Can I look at your stones, then?’

‘If you want to.’

Janey picked up the box clumsily, and spilled the stones on the floor.

‘Look what you’ve done,’ Tim said crossly. ‘Interrupting me … Pick them up, every one.’

Janey knelt and swept her hands over the floor, feeling for the stones. She counted them into the box in a low, droning voice. ‘Twenty nine,’ she said. She sat back on her heels and looked puzzled. ‘Funny—there’s twenty nine and there should be twenty nine altogether …’

‘What’s funny, then?’

‘Well, the last one you got isn’t here.’

‘The ruby one?’ Tim looked at the box. ‘Here it is, silly.’ He picked up the red stone and gave it to Janey. She felt it carefully, turning it in her fingers and stroking the surface. ‘This isn’t it,’ she said.

‘’Course it is,’ Tim said, ‘Don’t interrupt me when I’m thinking.’

In fact he wasn’t thinking, so much as dreaming—about Perdita’s diamond and his ruby, and wrecked ships and treasure …

Janey was frowning. ‘It isn’t the same, though. The other one had more—more
sides
,
and there was a sort of gritty patch …’

Tim took the stone from her. It looked the same—or it had
looked the same until now. Now, he wasn’t sure whether it looked different or whether he knew it must be different
because
Janey had said so. There didn’t seem to be so much colour in it, so much life and fire. ‘It looks just like red glass,’ he whispered.

‘The burglar stole it,’ Janey said. ‘He came in and stole it and changed it for
this
one. This is a new one. I never saw it before.’

She would be right about that, Tim knew. She never made a mistake about things she had felt carefully, and got to know. His heart jumped in his throat. Janey never made a mistake about what she heard, either …

He was terrified. ‘Janey,’ he whispered. ‘Janey—perhaps there was a burglar here last night, after all …’

‘I told you there was, didn’t I?’ Janey said in an irritated voice.

‘Ssh,’ Tim said. He slipped off the bed, where he had been sitting to think, and rest his foot, and went to close the bedroom door.

‘I wasn’t awake enough to be scared, really,’ Janey said. ‘But I heard someone breathing …’

There was a catch in her voice. Tim knelt and put his arm round her shoulders.

‘We ought to tell Mr Tarbutt,’ she said.

‘You did tell him last night. He didn’t believe you.’

‘About the ruby, I mean. It must have been a ruby, or the burglar wouldn’t have stolen it, would he? So if you tell Mr Tarbutt, he’ll know there was a burglar and he’ll tell the police and they’ll catch him and put him in prison. Then you’ll get the ruby back and we’ll sell it and we’ll all be rich for ever and ever …’

Janey gave a happy little sigh, as if she had just finished telling herself a lovely story.

And that’s what it would sound like to Mr Tarbutt, Tim thought. A lovely story. ‘He wouldn’t believe a word of it,’ he said.

‘Why ever not?’ Janey asked. ‘You just show him the stone and tell him someone stole yours. It’s proof.’

‘No,’ Tim said. ‘Or it’s only proof for
us
. I mean, we know it’s different, but Mr Tarbutt won’t know.’

‘We’ll tell him, then,’ Janey said confidently.

Tim said nothing. He believed the stone was different,
because
Janey had said it was, but Mr Tarbutt would never
understand
how Janey could be so sure. He didn’t know Janey. He didn’t know that she would remember the shape of something she had seen with her fingers better than an ordinary person who had only used his eyes. Only their mother and father would understand that.

‘We’d best not say anything till we see Dad,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t suppose he’ll believe it either. I mean, he’ll believe in the burglar, all right, once his memory comes back, and he’ll believe he took my stone, but he’ll think it was just some sort of mistake …’

‘What sort of mistake?’

Tim sighed. ‘Oh, I dunno. But you know what Dad
is
. He’ll find out some sort of reason … he
saw
the ruby, you see, and he didn’t believe it was one.’

He got up and went to the window. He stood, staring out. In his mind, he could hear his father’s calm, reasonable voice, talking and talking.
My
dear
Tim,
even
if
it
was
a
ruby,
which
I
don’t
happen
to
believe,
why
should
anyone
steal
it?
After
all,
no
one
knew
you
had
it,
did
they?

Suddenly Tim’s heart gave a leap, like a fish jumping in his throat. Mr Smith had known. He had said it wasn’t a ruby, but if he was a crook, he would have said that anyway, wouldn’t he? So that he would have time to find a piece of glass that looked just like it before he came to the hotel, creeping in to steal like a thief in the night … But how could he have got in? The window had been bolted and no one had come into the hotel by the door. At least, Toffee Papers had been sure no one
had. He and Mr Campbell had been sitting in the bar all the time. Mr Campbell. Was it the same Mr Campbell Mr Smith knew, the one who lived in the tent on the beach? Of course Campbell was as common a name in Scotland as Smith was in England. But suppose it
was
the same man. Suppose Mr Smith had told him about the ruby and Mr Campbell had told Toffee Papers …

‘He stole my stone,’ Tim said loudly. ‘Toffee Papers stole my stone, because he didn’t want anyone to know there was treasure on the beach. And when Dad came in and caught him, he knocked him down.’ He clenched his fists. ‘He ought to be put in prison.’

‘How do you know he found the treasure on the beach?’ Janey asked.

Something in the calm way she spoke might have made Tim doubtful if he had not been so absorbed in his own thoughts. ‘Well, because Perdita must’ve met him on the beach and that was when he gave her the diamond.’

‘She didn’t meet him on the beach,’ Janey said. ‘He was up at her house. She said Annie was cross because of the mess he made with the toffee papers. Don’t you remember?’

Now she had told him, he did. He whistled slowly through his teeth. ‘So they
must
both be in it, him and Mr Smith. And Mr Campbell too. They all found some buried treasure or something, and they want to keep it quiet …’

Oh,
Tim,
Tim
… He could hear his father’s voice and his gently amused laugh, as clearly as if he had been in the room.
Don’t
let
your
imagination
run
away
with
you.
That
sort
of
thing
only
happens
in
books.

‘Do you think he’s still there?’ Janey asked.

‘Who’s still where?’

‘Toffee Papers. Mr Jones. Mrs Tarbutt said she didn’t know where he was. Well, he might be up at Perdita’s house.’

‘Could be.’ Tim spoke rather coldly, because he should have
thought of this for himself. ‘If it
was
him, knocked Dad down, he’d have run away because he’d be afraid Dad would tell the police about him. So I suppose he might have gone to—to this place, whatever it’s called.’

‘Luinpool,’ Janey said patiently. ‘Don’t you ever listen?’

‘I did listen,’ Tim said, ‘but I was busy
thinking.
And if you’ll kindly keep quiet, I’m going to think
now.
’

He frowned and made deep, sighing noises to help the
process
.
I
expect
there
is
some
perfectly
simple
explanation
,
his father would say. And by
simple
he would mean that it must have nothing to do with smuggler’s caves or buried treasure. What his father would say—what would his father say? Tim frowned more fiercely as he tried to guess what would be the—extraordinarily dull, he thought—processes of his father’s mind. His father would say, he realised, that neither the ruby, nor
Perdita’s
diamond, were real.
Too
romantic
an
imagination,
old
chap.
And he would ruffle his son’s hair with a sigh: imagination was not a quality Mr Hoggart thought highly of.

‘But they
were
real, weren’t they?’ Tim said aloud.

He stood, biting the side of his thumb nail, and feeling confused.
Evidence
—he could hear Mr Hoggart saying it—
where
is
your
evidence
?
So far he had only got Janey’s word that there had been a burglar. And, though his father must have seen him and would tell the police as soon as he got better and
remembered
, he hadn’t told them yet, had he? Suppose he never did remember? Suppose he had lost his memory completely as a result of that bang on the head? Would he believe Janey’s story then? Would anyone? Of course they wouldn’t. Unless …

He whirled round. ‘Janey,’ he said in a hoarse whisper, ‘Janey—I know what we’ll do.’

T
HE WITCH’S DAUGHTER
lay on the rag rug in front of the range fire, her face to the ground. She was crying. She could hardly remember crying before—at least, not for years and years. ‘Witch’s can’t cry, it’s a known fact,’ Mr Smith had once said when she had fallen in the yard and cut her lip on a stone. And to please him, she had sat dry-eyed on the kitchen table while he dabbed at the cut with disinfectant—clumsily, because unlike Mr Jones, he was not a family man.

But now Mr Smith was going away. Annie had told her, and Perdita had been dry-eyed while she listened, staring at Annie with wide, unbelieving eyes. She had said nothing until Annie had gone out to feed the hens, and then the tears had burst out, gushing up like a fountain. She cried until she felt empty and weak. Then she rolled over and blinked her swollen eyes at the fire. She lay like that until she heard Annie at the back door, stamping the yard mud from her boots. Perdita got up and ran out of the kitchen, into the hall and up the stairs.

Mr Smith was out. The old house breathed and creaked with the wind. Perdita stood at the end of the long corridor at the top of the stairs and listened to the familiar sounds. Familiar—but there was something different, too. The plumbing clanged as Annie turned a tap on downstairs, but it wasn’t that. It was a new creak, a questioning little whine, like a door hinge. Perdita tiptoed along the corridor and saw that one of the locked rooms was open: the dark wood of the solid door was edged with light. She stood outside it, listening. The hinge creaked and the door blew shut. Then a breathy sigh, and it opened again just that little, lighted crack, as if the wind had sucked it inwards. Gently, Perdita put her hand on the door and pushed it.

It opened wide, onto a large, light room that was empty except for a camp bed with some blankets tumbled on it, and an open suitcase in the corner. The floor was a mess of mouse dirts and dust; the sunlight, falling through the dirty window, showed up a filmy pattern of cobwebs. Perdita crept across the floor to the window, which looked out onto the loch. The water was rippling with the wind and the wind pump was rattling round like a child’s paper windmill. Across the loch, the sun had gone behind the hills, turning them into sombre shadows, etched with dazzling light.

Perdita blinked her eyes, which felt hot and sore. She turned from the window and looked at the suitcase.

There was nothing remarkable about it. Just an old suitcase with a pair of shoes that needed mending, a few, crumpled magazines, newspapers … Newspapers. Suddenly interested, Perdita squatted down to see if there was anything she could read. But none of the letters seemed much like the wobbly ones Janey had drawn in the sand.

She began to turn the newspapers over. The paper felt brittle, like dry leaves, and smelt musty. She wrinkled her nose and was about to shut the case, when a picture caught her eye. A
photograph
. There was no mistaking that flat, froggy face. It was Mr Jones’s photograph, staring up at her from the front page.

There was some print underneath, in blacker type than the rest of the lettering, and easier to read. Mr. That was Mister. She muttered to herself. J should be the beginning of the next word, then. J for Janey and for Jam and for Jones. But it wasn’t. The first letter of the next word was a P.

P for Perdita. She breathed deeply, concentrating hard, and the letters stopped being just squiggles on the page and became meaningful. P for Perdita. R for Rat. A for Apple. T for Tomato. Then another T. P—she said the sound to herself. R—rolling the R. A. T.T. PRATT. Mr Pratt.

Exhausted, she sat back on her heels, smiling. She had read a
printed word. For a moment that was all it meant to her: a small triumph, the first step on the way to the school on Trull. Then puzzlement set in. Why should Mr Jones have a different name in the newspaper? She stared hard at the smaller print under the headline, but it told her nothing. Her mouth set in temper and she tore the page out, crumpling it in her hand to throw it away. Then, almost at once, her expression changed. Tim could read. He and Janey knew Mr Jones too. She smoothed the wrinkled page on the floor, folded it, and tucked it inside the neck of her dress.

*

At the hotel in Skuaphort, the telephone began to ring. Mr Tarbutt came out of the bar and went to answer it. Mrs
Hoggart
began to talk at the other end, her voice quick and excited. ‘Can’t hear you. Bad line,’ Mr Tarbutt said.

The voice at the other end slowed down.

Mr Tarbutt listened, scratching his head with his free hand in a bewildered fashion. ‘I don’t quite understand. Are you sure your husband is quite …’ he began, and then, hastily, ‘Oh, no, Mrs Hoggart, of course I believe you, it’s just that … No, he’s not here, we’ve not seen him all day, and, as a matter of fact my wife was quite worried but if what you say is …’ He cleared his throat loudly. ‘I mean, it looks as if he may have skipped off to avoid trouble … What … Oh, the children are fine, just had their tea … Yes, of course you can speak to Tim.’

He put the receiver down and went to the foot of the stairs. He called Tim and waited. When there was no answer, he ran up the stairs and opened the bedroom door. A piece of paper blew off the dressing table in the draught. Mr Tarbutt stooped for it, frowned, and went heavily down the stairs. He picked up the receiver and said, reluctantly, ‘I’m afraid they’re not here. Tim left a note. It just says they’ll be back before dark.’

He listened to Mrs Hoggart’s voice, which had begun to quack in a loud, alarmed way. Then he gave a brief, involuntary smile.

‘Oh, please don’t worry, Mrs Hoggart. I’m sure he is not a dangerous criminal. Even if he did attack your husband, I can’t believe he’d harm the children, even if he ran into them, which isn’t likely. Tim won’t have gone far, not with the little lass … Yes, of course, I’ll go out and look for them at once … No. No, Mrs Hoggart, I’m afraid there isn’t a police station here.’

A man had appeared in the doorway of the hotel. He stood there, his hands in his pockets, his face expressionless. Mr
Tarbutt
promised that he would telephone as soon as he had found the children. Then he put the receiver down and the man in the doorway spoke. ‘Police station?’ Mr Smith said. ‘Who wants a policeman on Skua?’

*

‘We ought to have told a policeman,’ Janey said.

‘What policeman? There isn’t even a doctor on Skua. And who’d believe us, anyway? No one would listen, Janey. Not without evidence. We’ve got to get evidence first.’

‘Are you going to ask Mr Jones for your ruby back? Are we going to see Perdita, at Luinpool?’

‘Well …’ Tim hesitated. That had, in fact, been his first indignant reaction: to walk up to Luinpool and confront Mr Jones. Then doubt had set in. Suppose he was wrong, after all. Suppose there was some ‘perfectly simple explanation’ which had, so far, eluded him? What a fool he would look! Even if someone had knocked his father down, there was no proof it was Toffee Papers. At least, he had no proof. And if he was right—well, if he was right, to go up to Luinpool might be dangerous!

‘I think it’s better to go to the cave first,’ he said. ‘If I found the ruby there, I expect that’s where Mr Jones found the treasure. So there might be another one.’ He breathed quickly, with excitement. ‘If we could find another ruby, Janey, then they’d have to believe us.’

‘But it’s a long way to Carlin’s Cave,’ Janey protested. ‘You and Dad went by car.’

‘It’s only a long way by road. Not if we go round by the headland.’

If
they
could go round by the headland.
If
Perdita was right about the path …

‘How far is it?’ Janey asked.

‘A bit beyond the bay.’ Tim looked at his sister. She was a good walker, but it was already late in the day and she would soon be tired. ‘I should have left you behind,’ he said. ‘I
told
you to stay behind …’

‘I wouldn’t though, would I?’ Janey said, smiling to herself.

Tim gave a little sigh. ‘No, you wouldn’t. Well, you mustn’t grumble, then.’

Janey showed no sigh of grumbling. She walked stoutly
beside
Tim who still limped a little, and held onto the sleeve of his wind cheater for guidance. ‘We’re nearly at the bay now,’ she said.

‘How d’you know?’ Tim said, surprised.

‘We’re out of the peaty bog. It’s grassy here, sort of springy. Then you get to the stone wall and over the wall there’s the up and down sandy part with the prickly grasses.’

‘The dunes,’ Tim said. ‘I’ll carry you through the dunes, if you like.’

‘No. I don’t mind. It tells me where I am.’

They had reached the bay and were crossing the sand towards the headland when Perdita saw them. She was walking the ridge of Ben Luin. She looked down at Skuaphort and saw Mr Smith’s white Jaguar drive away from the hotel and up the stony road. Then she looked down at the bay and saw Tim and Janey. She called out, but the wind was strong and tossed her voice away like a bird cry. She ran down off the ridge, so fast that her teeth jolted. The wind was very strong now, and the sky was sullen over the sea.

*

There was a path round the headland, a narrow path, a goat track. It wound up the cliff a little, through heather, and then
descended on the seaward side, a tiny ledge on the sheer cliff face. It was safe enough as long as you didn’t look down and turn giddy. Tim looked down once: beneath him, the sea boiled over rocks that were sharp and pointed like—like dragon’s teeth, he thought. He had to stop. Behind him, holding onto his wind cheater, Janey had to stop too. ‘What’s the matter? Have we got there?’

‘No.’ Tim swallowed. There was no point in telling her about that terrible drop. ‘It’s just my foot aching,’ he said, and forced himself on again.

The precipitous part was mercifully short. Once round the point of the headland—the Point of Caves—the path went a little inland, through two walls of rock, as if here the cliff had split open at some time. The rocky walls were high above them: all Tim could see when he looked up, was the purplish, menacing sky.
If
it
rains,
he thought,
it’ll
be
slippery
going
back,
and the thought made his stomach churn, as if he had eaten too much ice-cream. He wasn’t afraid for himself, he thought, but for Janey.
She
wasn’t frightened, of course. Whenever he stopped, she prodded him in the back and said, ‘Hurry up, lazy. I want to get to the cave.’

From this approach the cave and the little beach looked quite different from when Tim and his father had come down the side of the torrent. Tim could see, what he had not noticed then, that beyond the rocks was a small, natural harbour. A boat was moored there, rocking among the gingery seaweed. An outboard motor was propped up on the stern and the bottom of the boat was full of fishing tackle and lobster pots.

‘That’s Mr Campbell’s boat,’ Perdita said, as she came panting up to join them.

*

They sat on the shingle beach and looked at Mr Jones’s picture in the newspaper. Toffee Papers, Frog Face, Mr Jones. Pratt was the name the newspaper used. And Mr Pratt—who
was fifty-two, the newspaper said, and had two little girls—was not a burglar, or, indeed, a criminal of any kind. He was an assistant in a big jeweller’s shop in the West End of London, and an extremely brave man. When the shop had been raided by a gang late one winter afternoon, Mr Pratt, who had stayed after closing time to finish stock-taking, had behaved with great courage. Hearing a noise in the shop, he had telephoned the police from the back office, and then, fearing they would not arrive in time, he had attempted to prevent the thieves making a get-away. It was gallant but useless: when the police reached the shop they found the thieves gone, and poor Mr Pratt gagged and blindfolded and trussed up like a chicken ready for the oven. He had been badly hurt, severely bruised and cut about the face, and it was some time before he recovered sufficiently to make a statement. The odds had been terribly against him: there had been seven or eight men, though he could only describe one. ‘It all happened so suddenly,’ he said. The man he had seen was of medium height, not fat, not thin: he wore a hat and a raincoat and Mr Pratt had thought his eyes were brown, but he couldn’t be sure.

Tim frowned down at the newspaper. ‘Seems to me,’ he said, ‘that
that
could be a description of just about anybody. I mean—if you
had
to describe somebody, but didn’t want anyone to know who it was, that’s just the sort of description you’d give.’

He paused. ‘Perhaps he just isn’t a very noticing sort of person,’ he said. ‘Mum says there are a lot of people who don’t really notice what other people look like. She notices. She’s got a good memory for faces.’ He remembered something,
suddenly
. ‘She remembered
his
face, you know. She told me she thought she’d seen him somewhere before. I suppose she’d seen his picture in the paper …’

He thought a minute. ‘I wonder how long ago this happened. There isn’t any date …’

‘Three years, just about,’ said a voice behind them.