Dead Man's Quarry (29 page)

“I see no reason for hoping so,” said Rampson sadly, as they turned off the main road.

The village of Moseley seemed to sleep around its triangle of green. A little knot of dark-clothed men sat on the benches outside the Carpenter's Arms. A small girl in a red frock trundled a perambulator across the grass, using the handle-bar as book and elbow rest. Four or five lads stood around the pond which lay at the base of the green, throwing chestnuts at a family of ducks. The square-towered, hump-backed church behind its little churchyard kept a close watch upon its flock.

The one small shop and post office showed dark green blinds, close drawn over door and window, and a little front garden that displayed, among its dahlias, asters and late roses, the notice of a Grand Fête and another of Petrol for Sale.

“This,” said Rampson, drawing up before the little white gate, “is the very archetype of rural peace and innocence. A church, a green, and ducks upon the pond! Moreover, it is small. If there are any clues here, you won't have far to look for them.”

“I shall look in the shop first. Coming?”

“No. I'm going to pursue some investigations of my own at the Carpenter's Arms. You'll find me there when you come out. Buy me some bulls' eyes.”

“Can't. It's Sunday.”

After a moment's hesitation, John decided to go round to the side door. The shop door was obviously locked, and the front door of the little house, with its glittering brass handle and doorstep of pure snow, had such a formal and inviolable air. The springs of conversation would flow more easily, he thought, at the back, where straggling honeysuckle made a porch over a rough door set ajar on a small kitchen. He knocked, and a masculine voice requested him cheerily to come in. A young woman was engaged in clearing away tea-things, and a young man with shrewd blue eyes and a ruffled thatch of hair sat on the edge of the table with a child on his arm.

“Anything you want, mister? The shop's shut, by rights, being Sunday, but if there's anything you want pertickerlar, I can get it for you. Can't I, Sam?”

The two-year-old addressed as Sam made no answer, gazing round-eyed surprise from a countenance besmeared with jam and dust.

“Oh, wash his face, Eddy, for goodness' sake!” said the young woman, offering her husband a damp dishcloth, and to John:“Shall I put you a cup o' tea, sir? This is a bit cold, but the kettle's boiling and I can easy make some fresh.”

A talkative young woman. On John's refusal to partake of tea, she entered into a dissertation on the weather, the harvest, the Shops' Act, and the difficulty of teaching infants not to suck their thumbs. It was some time before John could communicate his errand.

Wrinkling her brows and plaiting her apron into little folds, she thought she did remember a young man on a bicycle coming about a week back. She was silent a moment, travelling back over seven days of supplying people with stamps, ginger-beer, bacon, cotton-reels and bananas. At last her face cleared.

“Yes!” she said animatedly. “Of course I remembers! And it were on a Saturday, as you says! For I remembers it were my busy day. A tall young gentleman with fairish hair and a bicycle. Said he were going to Hereford, and wanted a pound of bulls' eyes. ‘That'll be a tidy big bag,' I says, and he said they was for his young lady. ‘Why don't you ask her in?' I says. ‘We've got ginger-beer and lemonade, or could damp some tea, and cycling's thirsty work?' But it seemed he'd left her somewhere on the road waiting for him. I remembers well, for when I were weighing out the sweets, I were thinking: A pound of bulls' eyes, they'll get in a tidy sticky mess in his pockets afore they're all ate!”

“Can you remember anything else he said?” asked John hopefully.

She shook her head.

“Nothing, except what a fine day it were, and how far were it to Hereford, and this were hilly country for a bike. Oh, and he wanted to know had I any iodine, because he'd gived his ankle a bit of a twist and it were beginning to come up a bit. I hadn't none, not in stock, but as it happened, there were a bottle with some in that I got for Baby when he cut his foot. So I looked it out for him, and put him some in a little bottle, and off he went.”

Iodine. Yes, Charles had sprained his ankle slightly. Felix had said so, that day in the Tram Inn shed, when they were all standing round the body. What more natural than that he should supply himself with iodine? There had been no brown stain on either of his ankles when Dr. Browning had examined them in the shed. But he might never have used it. Or he might have used it once or twice and washed it off.

“That was all, sir,” the young woman assured John, as he did not reply at once. “He didn't ask for nothing else, nor say nothing else that I remembers.”

“Thank you very much for remembering him at all,” said John. “You didn't happen to notice which way he went when he left here, did you?”

“Yes, I did, for I went to the door with him. He got on his bike and went straight off to the main Hereford Road. I seed him turn the corner.”

John took his leave and crossed the green to the Carpenter's Arms. He found Rampson discussing the weather with the rushes gathered around the inn's long trestles, and joined them in a glass of sour but refreshing cider.

As they walked back to the car Rampson remarked: “Your friend Charles didn't do anything in this village but buy bulls' eyes, John. I found a man in the pub who saw him come and go, and he says he wasn't in the place above ten minutes. He was cutting the grass on the green, my aged friend was, and he saw a young chap on a bicycle come in from the lane and go straight to the post office. And then he saw him come out of the post office and get on his bike and go straight back up the lane. So I'm afraid this village isn't exactly a hotbed of clues.”

John nodded.

“It isn't. I've discovered the reason why he didn't invite anybody to come with him, and it's a perfectly innocent reason. He wanted to buy some iodine.”

Rampson laughed.

“Iodine? Is that a reason for creeping off by stealth? I thought you were going to say cocaine or opium, at least, if not prussic acid. I shouldn't mind buying iodine with the whole population of England looking on, personally.”

“Of course not. But when they said in the shop he'd been buying iodine, I remembered Felix telling us that he had spoken of spraining his ankle a little—not much of a sprain, you know, just a nasty twist. Of course he wanted the iodine for that.”

“And still I don't see the need for secrecy. It isn't a crime to sprain one's ankle.”

“No, but I also remembered Dr. Browning asking Felix why Charles hadn't mentioned it and had free medical attention. And Felix said that Charles had asked him not to say anything about it, because he hated having any sort of fuss made, and didn't like people to know he was ass enough to have anything the matter with him, or words to that effect.”

“That,” said Rampson approvingly, driving off, “is the first good word I've heard said for Sir Charles Price. But it rather puts the lid on your theory of mystery at the cross-roads, doesn't it?”

“It does. I'm sorry I've dragged you all this way for nothing, Syd. But at any rate I can cross Charles's secret expedition to Moseley off the list of suspicious circumstances, and forget about it. And that's something, in such a welter of apparently disconnected facts.”

“Apparently!” echoed Rampson, shaking his head. “My dear John, never forget that apparently disconnected facts are often actually disconnected. Far, far more often than Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Mr. John Christmas seem to imagine.”

“Now, Sydenham,” said John firmly, “don't start trying to depress me again. I need all my strength to think out a plan of campaign for to-morrow.”

“To-morrow?”

“I'm going to London to-morrow to look for Clytie Meadows. I shall probably take Felix with me, and Nora's coming to fetch some canvases from her sister's. You're going to stay behind and keep an eye on things at Rhyllan.”

“Things? What things?”

“Oh, things,” answered John vaguely. “Nothing in particular, but I shall feel happier if I know you're there.”

“But,” protested Rampson as they flew along the road towards Hereford, “I've already told you that I don't feel I can stay at Rhyllan and eat the bread of Price any longer.”

“You must just stun your tender conscience as best you can, Sydenham,” said John firmly, “for staying you are. After all, you're doing the Prices a good turn by staying, whatever your private views may be. Anyhow, I'm not going to have my plans spoilt by any nonsensical squeamishness about eating bread, so if you can't stay with a clear conscience, you must just stay and suffer pangs.”

“I wish you wouldn't talk about bread and pangs, John,” said Rampson plaintively. “You've made me realize it's past dinner-time and I'm ghastly hungry. Oh, confound these geese! There ought to be a law against letting animals loose on the highways.”

“There
is
a law against letting motorists loose on the highways,” replied John gloomily. “Do moderate your hunger, Sydenham. I really can't afford a broken neck just now.”

“Good-bye,” said Blodwen. “When will you be back?”

She spoke mechanically, as if she did not care when they came back, nor whether they came back at all.

“Late to-night, if we're lucky,” replied John, opening the door of the car for Nora and her rugs. “But don't worry if we're not back till to-morrow. I'll take care of Felix.”

“What about you, Nora?”

“Oh, Tm not part of the flying squad. John's just giving me a lift to my sister's. I've got to fetch some canvases I left behind,” explained Nora, tucking the rug carefully around her ankles.

John, who had a shrewd suspicion that Nora's wish to go to London was not prompted solely by a desire for canvas, smiled and said:

“I promised your father I'd leave you at your sister's, Nora, and leave you out of our search for Mrs. Field. And I'm afraid I'm a man of my word.”

“All right,” said Nora innocently. “Of course. I know.”

“Well,” said Blodwen, “I wish you success.”

She spoke absently and did not smile, and then, as though suddenly herself aware of the omission, gave a hard artificial smile and waved her hand.

“Good-bye! Good-bye!”

John hesitated, his hand on the clutch.

“We're leaving you Rampson to look after you.”

A queer dark look came into Blodwen's fine bright eyes.

“Thank you.”

Still John hesitated. He glanced up at the curtained windows of the room where Rampson was still sleeping. He glanced again at Blodwen Price. The clear morning light did not suit her. She looked old and tired standing there on the steps with the early sun on her. One of her red setters sidled up and rubbed his silky head against her knee, but she seemed oblivious of it. Oh, well! Rampson could be trusted to look after himself!

“Good-bye! Good-bye!”

The car slid down the drive and into the dewy freshness of the September morning.

“What's the matter with Blodwen?” asked Nora in mild surprise, looking back towards the terrace where Miss Price was still standing, quiet as a waxwork, looking over the lawns.

John shook his head, but Felix, sitting in the dicky, replied in a low voice:

“The matter? What's the matter with all of us? What should be the matter in these delightful circumstances?”

“I'm sorry, Felix. Felix, don't! What's the use? But Blodwen does seem to have something extra the matter with her this morning. She was quite herself last night.”

“Probably,” said Felix coldly, “she hasn't slept much.” He hesitated, and took the hand Nora held out to him across the back of the seat. “I'm sorry, Nora,” he said in a low voice. “But it's all very well for you people to say what's the matter? and what's the use? For you, it's just—fun, all this. Isn't it?”

There was a pause.

“Partly,” replied the truthful Nora at length. She seemed about to say more, but altered her mind, withdrew her hand and turned thoughtfully away.

It was nearly two o'clock when they entered the Brompton Road. John turned to Nora.

“You turn down opposite the Brompton Oratory,” said Nora placidly. “Will you stay to lunch at Eveline's? Or can't you spare the time?”

Feeling a trifle baffled, John turned down as directed. Was it possible that Miss Watson had no ulterior motive in coming with them to London? She had not, apparently, any desire to accompany Mr. Holmes on his adventures. John was exceedingly relieved, for he had anticipated some difficulty in carrying out his promise to Dr. Browning. Ridiculously enough, he was a little disappointed, too.

They left Nora at her sister's pleasant little house in a quiet Kensington street, promising to call there when their mission was completed, and refusing an invitation to stay to lunch.

“I wonder,” murmured John to himself, as they drove off.

“What?”

“Whether Nora's got anything up her sleeve. She didn't mention anything to you, I suppose?”

Felix looked surprised.

“No. What sort of thing? What do you mean?”

“I thought at first that fetching canvases was just an excuse to join in the hunt for Clytie Meadows. But I suppose I was wrong.”

“You promised her father you wouldn't take her, didn't you?”

“I know,” said John pensively. “That's what makes me wonder, as I said before, whether she has anything up her sleeve. I didn't hear
her
make any rash promises to her anxious parent. I've kept my promise, but I feel a bit responsible for her. And she's rather a lively person to be responsible for.”