A Nice Derangement Of Epitaphs Part 9

"We could have a more thorough look on the way back. We've got time, it's not much after twelve. And there's nothing for us here."

They turned back rather reluctantly, all the same; n.o.body likes going back by the same route. It is, as Paddy had rightly observed, a fundamental predilection of human nature to want to get somewhere, even if most arrivals turn out to be disappointing.

The floor on which they walked had been smoothed in places by stones deliberately laid. Sometimes it was naked rock, sometimes this levelled causeway, and sometimes, especially where the narrow cleft opened out into a broader pa.s.sage, there was deep, fine grey sand. With a light, the whole half-mile of it was easy, no more than a stony walk; and all these later reaches were dry, for over the entire length the level climbed very gently, and bore away inland from the Dragon's Hole at a brisk right incline.

"Where do you suppose we are?" asked Paddy as they turned back, playing his light ahead of them on both rough walls. "Half a mile is farther than the neck, we must be right under the high part of the town."

"I don't think we've borne as far to the right as that," objected Dominic. "I'd say somewhere just the other side the Head, under the dunes."

"It's so straightforward here," said Tamsin, stepping out merrily in the lead, "you hardly need a light." And promptly on the word she tripped over a stone that tilted treacherously out of the sandy floor, and went down with a squeak of protest on hands and knees.

Dominic and Paddy both reached solicitous hands to help her up, but for a moment she sat scowling, dusting her hands and examining her nylons. "d.a.m.n! Somebody owes me a new pair of stockings." A ladder was trickling playfully downward from her right knee.

"I'll buy you some new ones with my guinea," offered Paddy generously. "That was pretty much how I found it, actually, only I had more excuse, because I didn't have a light that time. You sure you're not sitting on a pirate's h.o.a.rd?"

"Not unless he h.o.a.rded granite sand. But there was something sharp, look, it broke the skin." She sifted fine sand through her fingers, probed the indentation her knee had made, and raised from beneath the surface a thin ring of yellow wire, with edges that barely met. "That's the secret weapon. Not a pirate's h.o.a.rd, but maybe a smuggler's ear-ring." She rubbed it on her sleeve, and it gleamed encouragingly. "I believe that's what it is. It looks like gold wire."

They ran the torch carefully over every corner of the sanded floor, but found nothing more. Tamsin pocketed her find, and they resumed their methodical walk back. There were broken bays in the rocks here and there to be explored, but all of them proved to be dead ends; and as they drew nearer to the Dragon's Hole tiny trickles of water filtered down from the walls and channelled the sand of the floor.

They reached the seaward end of the tunnel, where the low, screened entrance hole shrank to thigh-height, and doubled upon itself midway in an optical illusion of solid rock. They crawled through on hands and knees, and stood upright again in the upper reaches of the Dragon's Hole.

When they had dropped down the slopes of shale and sh.e.l.l to where the light of the September day penetrated, there were still a few children playing on the sand, but even these were being called away to lunch by parents and elder sisters. The midday quiet was descending on Maymouth's beaches. Far down the glistening sh.o.r.e the tide had turned, and was beginning to lip its way back towards the town, but it would be two hours yet before it covered the cavern again.

"You could come and have lunch with us," said Dominic, "if you'd like to. Tamsin's staying. We could ring up your mother and tell her." But he made the offer rather hesitantly, and was not surprised when it was politely refused. Paddy hadn't seen his mother for all of three hours, and there are times when three hours is a long time. Moreover, he had to demonstrate, rather than claim, that he was a responsible person who paid attention to the times of high and low tide, and could be trusted not to take any more chances.

"Thanks awfully, but I think I ought to go home."

"Well, come and have an ice with us, anyhow."

Paddy jumped at this offer. They climbed the steep path from the harbour to the Dragon's Head, and turned in by the first pale cliff- track towards the Dragon Hotel.

"Better put this with your guinea," said Tamsin, extracting the thin gold ring from her pocket. "I don't suppose it's anything much, but hang on to it, and time will show."

"Do you think we should tell Mr. Hewitt about it? I told him I was coming to have another look at the pa.s.sage, but he wasn't much interested."

"Question of priorities," said Dominic with courteous gravity. "Tell him about it, but leave it till he's got time for it. He's probably got a dozen lines to follow up, and some of 'em more urgent than this. He'll work his way round to it."

They were walking close to the gra.s.sy edge of the cliff, where it overhung the beach and the harbour. Paddy looked down, from the painted operetta-set of Cliffside Row to the mouth of the blow-hole. The children were all gone now, the whole sickle of moist sh.o.r.e was empty. Only one lance of movement caught his eye.

From the narrow alley behind the cottages darted the figure of a girl, hugging the shadow of the cliff. She had tied a dark chiffon scarf over her candy-floss torch of pale hair, but Paddy knew her all the same, by her fawn-coloured sweater and Black-Watch-tartan legs. She ran head-down, hugging something small and shapeless under her arm. Because of the overhang he lost sight of her for a full minute, then she reappeared close to the deep shadow of the Dragon's Hole, and darted into it, and vanished.

He opened his mouth to call the attention of his companions to her, and then after all he held his tongue, and walked on with them in silence. But he couldn't get Rose Pollard out of his mind. And the more he thought of her, the clearer did it seem to him that she had been in the act of launching herself on this same errand earlier this morning, and then had drawn back when she saw them go down the beach ahead of her, and enter the cave. She had watched them every step of the way, he recalled now the stillness and tension of that small figure standing at the edge of the sunlight. The tide had dropped just clear of the entrance then, the beach had been otherwise almost deserted, only they had prevented whatever it was Rose wanted to do. Almost certainly she had watched them emerge again into sunlight and walk back to the harbour steps and the cliff path. Then, with the last of the playing children called home to lunch, she had found the coast clear at last.

For what? He had known her since he was a small boy, she had acted as baby-sitter several times for his mother, and he had liked her because she was kind and pretty and soft, and he could twist her round his finger, stay up as long as he liked, make all the mess he wanted in his bath, and ignore the finer points of was.h.i.+ng. She wouldn't have the resolution to do anything dangerous or underhanded, and she wouldn't have the wits to cover it up for long even if she tried it. Unless, perhaps, for Jim she could rise to things she wouldn't dare attempt for herself? It was was her father who was dead, and she hadn't liked her father any better than anyone else had, and Jim had detested him, because of her. But they couldn't have done anything bad, he wouldn't believe it. They were both too open, not for darkness and secrecy. Not for caves! Rose was frightened of the dark. What her father who was dead, and she hadn't liked her father any better than anyone else had, and Jim had detested him, because of her. But they couldn't have done anything bad, he wouldn't believe it. They were both too open, not for darkness and secrecy. Not for caves! Rose was frightened of the dark. What was was she doing there? she doing there?

Mute and abstracted, he ate his way through a ca.s.sata, and made his farewells. But once he was out of sight of the hotel terrace and back on the cliff path, it was towards Maymouth that he turned. He slid recklessly down the whitening, late-summer gra.s.s to the harbour, clattered down the steps, and homed like a racing pigeon into the gaping mouth of the Dragon's Hole.

She wasn't in the open part of the cave, he knew that intuitively as soon as he crept into the dark interior. There were no echoes, only the very faint and ubiquitous murmur of water, that was inaudible when there were voices and movements to drown it. She might have gone right through into the haven at Pentarno, which would still be dry at this hour; but he scrambled purposefully straight through until the daylight met him again, and the great waste of the beach and the dunes lay within sight, and there was no Rose to be seen crossing the sands.

In his heart he'd known all along where she must be. He abandoned the stony channel, and climbed inland, as quietly as he could, until he stood hesitating unhappily over the entrance to the tunnel.

He couldn't follow her in there without meeting her face to face, and somehow he couldn't bring himself to precipitate a situation like that, at least not until he knew what he was doing. He looked round him for the best cover, compressed his slight person into a screened corner as close as he dared to the pa.s.sage, and sat there silently, his arms wound round his knees, his heart thumping. She couldn't possibly stay long, whatever she had to do there, because she had to return by the same way, and to make good her retreat from the cave before the tide engulfed it. But if she didn't come, what must he do? Get out in time himself, and tell Jim? But Jim must surely know already. Husbands and wives were in each other's confidence, weren't they? Tell Hewitt, then? Or ought he to stay there and take care of Rose? But he couldn't couldn't do that to his mother, not again! He was getting hopelessly confused as to where his duty lay. do that to his mother, not again! He was getting hopelessly confused as to where his duty lay.

Rose spared him a decision. Before he heard her footsteps he saw a thin, pale pencil of light filter out of the rock wall, and waver across the shaly floor. She was hurrying, perhaps afraid of the tide, though she had still plenty of time by his reckoning. He heard the pebbles rasping, and uneven, running steps suddenly ending in a soft thud, as she threw herself down to creep through the low opening. The light of her torch leaped and fluttered with every thrust of the hand that held it. She clawed her way through, careless of the noise she made, as though a demon had been hard at her heels. When she scrambled to her feet, he saw the flickering light cast from below upon her pale hair, from which the scarf had been dragged back on to her shoulders. He saw her face twisted hopelessly into a child's mask of anguish, smeared with tears, the soft mouth contorted, the round chin jerking.

She blundered away from him down the slope, slipping and recovering in her frantic haste, and he heard the convulsed sobbing of her breath, and a faint, horrified whimpering that made the short hairs rise in the nape of his neck. The rattle of pebbles from under her feet receded and was still.

He sat for some minutes hugging his knees and shaking, reluctant to creep out after her where he must be seen. It didn't seem decent to let her guess that he'd been spying upon her in that condition. It didn't seem decent now that he had ever thought of doing it, but he had, and he hadn't meant any harm to her, rather the opposite. Better not to say anything to anybody, because whatever she was so frightened and so unhappy about, Rose couldn't have done any wrong, she had no wrong in her, she was too soft and mild. Better to go through the Hole to the Pentarno side; he might have to roll up his slacks and wade out at the entrance that side, because it lay a couple of feet or so lower than the Maymouth end. But it wouldn't be any worse than that, and he could still be home before his mother began to get worried.

He scurried down the slope to the thread of water that was gathering in the channel, and clambered hastily through the Hole again, to splash through the first encroaching foam and take to his heels up the Pentarno beach. The remembered vision of Rose Pollard hung before his eyes every step of the way, both aims spread for balance, the glow of the torch flailing in her right hand.

One thing at least was certain. When she came back from her mysterious errand, she had no longer been carrying anything under her arm.

CHAPTER VIII.

SAt.u.r.dAY EVENING.

PHIL WAS WAs.h.i.+NG UP after tea when Hewitt called. She put her head in at the door of the living-room to report: "For you, Simon. Mr. Hewitt says the pathologist's come to have a look at Mrs. Treverra's body, and if you and Tim would care to be present, he'd be grateful. I suppose he wants to have the family represented, so that there can't be any complaints or anything later. Shall I tell him you'll be along?"

All three of them had looked up sharply at the message, Paddy sensitive to the quiver of feeling on the air, and stirred out of his unnaturally subdued quietness. All afternoon Tim and Phil had been exchanging anxious glances over his head, and wondering how long to let him alone, how soon to shake him out of his abstraction. A very dutiful, mute, well-behaved boy who sat and thought was not at all what they were used to.

"How about it, Tim? I don't say it's the pleasantest thing in the world to see, but if we can learn anything from it, I think we should."

"I'll come, I want to. It's a h.e.l.l of a thing," said Tim soberly.

"Then he says in a quarter of an hour, at St. Nectan's. They don't propose to disturb her, not unless there's absolute need. I'll tell him you'll be there."

Tim looked at Paddy. There was no guessing what was in his head, but it could only be the shocks and readjustments of yesterday that were still preoccupying him. Unless directly addressed, he hadn't once said a word to Simon, and they had refrained from discussing the inexplicable tragedy of Morwenna in front of him. But sooner or later he had to learn to move and breathe in the same air with Simon again, and find some sort of terms on which he could live with him, and he might just as well begin at once.

"How about you, Paddy?" invited Tim after a moment's hesitation. "Come along with us for the ride?"

The serious face brightened, wavered and smiled. "I bet that means I don't get to come in," he said, but he got up from his chair with every appearance of pleasure.

"I think I'd rather you didn't. But I'll tell you about it as we go."

"O.K., Dad, I'll come, anyhow." He hadn't been with Tim very much during the day, and he found that he wanted to. To sit by him in the front seat of the Mini, and touch shoulders with him now and again, was comfort, pleasure and rea.s.surance. Subdued and amenable, he wasn't going to ask any favours; if he was required to sit in the car while they went down into the vault, he'd do it, and not even creep to the top of the steps to peer down in the hope of a glimpse of forbidden sights. It was his pleasure to please Tim. You can be demonstrative with mothers, but showing fathers how you feel about them is not quite so simple, you use what offers, and hope they'll get the idea.

They threaded the sunken lane, halted at the coast road, and crossed it to the track among the dunes. The smell of the evening was the smell of the autumnal sea and the fading gra.s.ses.

"I didn't know they were thinking of opening Mrs. Treverra's coffin, too. Why did they? Was that this morning?"

Any other time he would have been asking Simon, hanging over the back of the seat and feeding on his looks and words like a puppy begging for cake. Now he sat close and asked Tim, in his quiet, young baritone, touchingly grave and tentative.

"Yes, this morning. After you left, I suppose it must have been. I wasn't there. Mr. Hewitt thought it necessary to search every possible place in the vault, because it seems there must have been something there to account for Trethuan's not wanting it opened. And the only place that hadn't been searched already was Morwenna's coffin. So they opened that, too." Tim eased the Mini down into the rutted, drifting sand, and was silent for a moment. "She's there, Paddy. It isn't like the other one, she is there. Well, this chap's going to tell us whether the body that's there is from the right time, and so on, but I don't think there's much doubt. But what's terribly wrong is that she-well, she isn't at peace. She's fully dressed-she was was-and she was trying to get out. She-must have been alive when they left her there. It could happen. Sometimes it has happened."

He had felt the young, solid shoulder stiffen in unbelieving horror, and he wanted to soften the picture, to set it two centuries away, like a dream or a sad song.

"They hadn't modern methods or modern knowledge. There could be conditions like death. They weren't to blame. And thank G.o.d, they couldn't have known. Only we know, when it's all over, two hundred years and more. Like 'The Mistletoe Bough.' It wouldn't be quite like you think. The air would give out on her, you see. She'd only have what was inside the stone coffin, and then, gradually, sleep. It wouldn't be long."

Simon might not have been there. There was no one else in the car. Paddy leaned closer by an inch, delicately and gratefully, "It could look like a struggle, but be only very brief. Very soon she grew drowsy. Only she stayed like that, you see, fighting to lift the lid and get out. She slept like that. And when she was dead-Well, you've read her epitaph. This makes me think she wrote it herself. I don't even know why, but it does."

Paddy said, in a small but still adult voice, perhaps even a note or two nearer the ba.s.s register than usual: "I always thought she was so beautiful."

"So did I. She'll find him again, you can bet on that. She wasn't the sort to let death stop her."

The Mini turned in to the left among the dunes. The little open lantern of St. Nectan's stood clear against the sky.

"It wasn't ugly," said Simon unexpectedly from the back seat. "A scent, and a puff of air, and a little dust. She was very little, like in her picture, and all m.u.f.fled up in a travelling cloak with a hood-at least, I think so. She had ma.s.ses of black hair, and such tiny bones."

Paddy said nothing more. He sat almost oblivious when they got out of the car and left him there between the shadowy dunes. He woke out of his daze when he heard the strange voices, and turned his head to see them met and greeted by Hewitt, with George Felse in attendance, and a stranger who must be the police pathologist. He watched them unlock the padlock on the gate, and go in single file down the steep staircase. He heard the heavy door below swing wide, but he didn't move. If the window of the car had not been open, he would not have heard the raised tones of their voices, like gasps of amazement and consternation rising hollowly out of the grave.

Something was wrong, down there. Something, was not as they had expected it to be. Paddy put out a hand to open the door of the car, and then drew it back, s.h.i.+vering, afraid to want to know.

But you can't turn your back on knowledge, just because it may be uncomfortable. Supposing someone else should need what you know? Someone who belongs to you, and doesn't know how much you know already?

He slipped out of the car, and crept close to the rail of the vault. The open doorway showed him nothing but a corner of Treverra's empty tomb, and half of George Felse and all of Tim, hiding from him even the foot of the second coffin. But the voices sailed up to him clearly, roused and brittle, and in signal agreement.

"None of it was there this morning," said Hewitt. "There was nothing nothing with her in the coffin. All of us but Mr. Rossall were here, we know what we uncovered." with her in the coffin. All of us but Mr. Rossall were here, we know what we uncovered."

"We couldn't possibly have missed seeing this," said Simon. "Even if we didn't disturb or touch her, we looked pretty carefully. It's enough to make you look carefully, isn't it? Well, she'd none of all this with her then. Nothing!"

"But if you've had both keys in your own hands all the time, and you locked up again carefully this morning," said the one strange voice with dry mildness, "it would seem to be impossible."

"It is, d.a.m.ned impossible, but it's happened." It was the first time Paddy had ever heard Hewitt sound exasperated. "Take a look at this, this is real enough, isn't it? That wasn't here, none of this was here spilled round her feet, at eleven o'clock this morning. But it's here now at six in the evening. And I'm telling you-I'm telling myself, for that matter-this place has been locked all that time, and I've had both keys on me. And tell me, just tell me, why should anyone, guilty or innocent or crazy or what, bring this this here and leave it for us to find?" here and leave it for us to find?"

He plunged a hand suddenly into something that rattled and rang like the loose change in a careless woman's handbag, and brandished across the coffin, for one moment full into Paddy's line of vision, a handful of coins and small trinkets that gleamed, in spite of all the discolorations of time, with the authentic yellow l.u.s.tre of antique gold.

He shut himself into the front pa.s.senger seat of the car, and held his head, because it felt as if it might burst if he worked the brain within it too hard. One little guinea in the sand of the tunnel, and a fistful of them in Morwenna's coffin. And the door locked, and both keys in police custody, and the whole thing impossible, unless-it was the last thing he had overheard as he retreated-unless there was yet another key.

Or another door! n.o.body had said that, but he couldn't stop thinking it. Not an ordinary door, a very retiring door, one that wasn't easy to find.

Under the ground he'd had almost no sense of direction, but Dominic had said-somewhere under the dunes. Paddy took an imaginary bearing from the church towards the blow-hole under the Dragon's Head, and tried frantically to estimate distances. It was possible. It had to be possible, because there was no other possible way of accounting for everything.

They were down there a long time, nearly an hour. He stayed in the car all the time, because it had dawned on him that if he spied on them, or even asked them questions when they returned, he would have to tell them things in exchange; and he couldn't do that, not yet, not without other people's consent. No, there was only one thing to do, and that was go straight to the Pollards, and tell them what he knew, and try to make them see that the next move was up to them.

But there was no reason why he shouldn't use his eyes to the best advantage when the five men emerged from the deep enclosure of the Treverra tomb. Hewitt climbed the steps only to cross to his car, take a small rug from the boot, and make a second trip down into the vault with it. When he came up again he was carrying the rug rolled into a thick, short bundle under his arm. What was inside it, allowing for the bulk of the rug itself, might be about the size of a three-pound bag of flour, but seemed to be a good deal heavier. Say, a small gunnysack full of coins-or maybe a little leather draw-string bag, such as they used for purse and wallet in the eighteenth century. About the right size, at any rate, to match that small, shapeless bundle Rose had carried under her arm at noon.

Tim got into the car prepared for questions, and there were none. "Don't you want to know if it is really Morwenna?" he offered, concerned at such uncharacteristic continence.

"Well, yes, of course!" The boy brightened readily. "I thought you'd tell me what I'm allowed to know. I didn't want to poke my nose past where the line's drawn."

"Such virtue!" said Tim disapprovingly. "You're not sickening for something, are you?"

He started the engine, and the Mini came about gently in the trodden s.p.a.ce before the church, and followed the police car back to the road.

"Is Uncle Simon riding with them, this time?"

"Yes, he wanted to talk to the pathologist. We're pretty sure it's Morwenna. Right age, right period, right build, no reason to suppose it would be anyone else. There'll be some work to do on fabric, and all that, but it looks authentic."

"Where are we going now?"

"Back to the police station. We've got a bit of conferring to do, if you wouldn't mind amusing yourself for an hour or so. Or would you rather I took you home first?"

"No," said Paddy, almost too quickly and alertly. "I'll come down into town with you, that'll suit me fine. While you're in your official huddle, there's somebody I want to see."

He knocked at the front door of the second pink cottage in Cliffside Row just as the church clock was chiming half past seven; and on the instant he recoiled a step or two nervously, almost wis.h.i.+ng he had let well alone, for the consequences of the knock manifested themselves before the door was opened. Something-it sounded like a gla.s.s-shattered on a quarried floor. A girl's voice uttered a small, frightened cry, and a young man's, suddenly sharp with fury and helplessness, shouted: "For G.o.d's sake, girl, what's up with you to-day? Anybody'd think a gun had gone off. It's only the door. If there's something wrong with you, I wish you'd have the sense to tell me. Oh, come out! I'll go."

The door, suddenly flung wide, vanished with startling effect, as if Jim Pollard's large young fist had plucked it off. Levelled brown eyes under a thick frowning ridge of brow stared dauntingly at Paddy.

"Well, what's up?" The eyes, once they focused upon him, knew him well enough. "Oh, it's you, young Rossall. What do you want?" Less unfriendly, but as anxious as ever to get rid of him and get back to whatever scene they had been playing between them there in the doll's-house living-room. The knock on the door had been only a punctuation mark. Paddy felt small, unsupported, and less certain of the sacred harmony of marriage than he had been two minutes ago. But he'd started it, and now there was no backing out.

"I'd like to talk to you and Rose, please. It's very important."

"Mrs. Pollard to you, my lad," said Jim smartly. "All right, come in."

"I'm sorry! She used to let me call her Rose, but I won't do it if you don't like it. It was only habit."

He stepped over the brightly-Cardinalled doorstep into the pretty toy room, and Jim closed the door behind him. Rose, clattering dust-pan and brush agitatedly in the minute kitchen beyond, was sweeping up the fragments of the gla.s.s she had dropped. The door between was open, and Paddy saw her slide a furtive glance at him, and take heart. All the same, her eyes were evasive and her hands unsteady when she came in.

"Hallo, Paddy, what's the matter?"

"Nothing with me," he said, making straight for the essential issue, head-down and ready for anything. "It's you you! I came to tell you I know where you went this morning, and what you did. I saw you take something with you into the Dragon's Hole, and I know where you left it. Don't you see how silly it is to act as if you've done something bad, when you haven't? Mr. Pollard, you must get her to tell the police everything, it's the best thing, really it is. I know about the money and the jewellery, you see, I know she put them-"

His impetuous rush had carried him thus far through a silence of stupefaction on one side and desperation on the other, but now, in a subdued way which didn't carry beyond the walls, h.e.l.l broke loose. Rose burst into tears and flung herself face-down into a chair. Jim gaped open-mouthed from one to the other of them, and with a muted bellow of rage clouted Paddy on the ear with an open right hand as hard as a spade. The blow slammed him back against the wall, from which one of Rose's pretty little calendar pictures, a golden-haired tot with a bunch of forget-me-nots, promptly fell and smashed.

"You nasty little brat!" growled Jim through his teeth. "You come here slandering my wife, and see what you'll get! Who d'you think you're threatening with the police, you-"

n.o.body had ever hit Paddy like that before. Instead of taming him it infuriated him. Clasping his smarting cheek, he shouted back into the menacing face that leaned over him: "I wasn't threatening her, I wasn't slandering her, I said-"

"I heard what you said. Accusing her of taking money and jewellery-"