Let Him Lie (15 page)

“Why not?”

“Once I did find a penny of the reign of William the Fourth. It was very exciting. And once I found a halfpenny of King George the Fifth that had been in a bonfire, and that was very exciting, I can tell you, until I had cleaned it. And now I have found a pearl necklace, but I think it is not very ancient and I fear it is not pearl. Never mind. One day I will find a golden torque and a fibula and a great jar full of golden coins of King Cunobelinus.”

He rose as he spoke. Myfanwy had been on her feet some time and obviously anxious to be gone now that she could no longer have Jeanie to herself. Watching them into their car, Jeanie thought them a queer couple.

Recalling Agatos's warning, Jeanie damped her parlour fire down with the contents of the sink-strainer before she went out, later that afternoon, to see Agnes. As she did so, she felt for herself the hidden beam behind the mantel. It was certainly hot. She determined to write a curt note to her builder this evening, reminding him that he had not finished his job, for her builder, in the fickle way of builders, had temporarily deserted Yew Tree Cottage for some other more alluring case of dilapidation.

As she walked along the road her thoughts shifted uneasily to her little friend Sarah, about, it seemed, to be used as a missile in the warfare between her mother and her aunt. It had been foolish of Robert Molyneux to leave the child dependent on her aunt's goodwill. But wiser men than he, Jeanie supposed, had had illusions about their wives!

The sun was setting as Jeanie walked towards the west, and a cold wind blew fitfully down the road, as though it did but wait for darkness to become a gale. Cole Harbour stood silhouetted black against the wanly luminous sky. The sun, going down behind heavy clouds, pointed a last finger of light towards the clump of conifers on Grim's Grave, plucking forth tones of red from the black boles and muted tones of green from the black needles. Loitering along the road, watching the slow withdrawing of the sun's finger and the fading of red and green out of the black trees, Jeanie saw a human being come with a queer furtiveness along the vallum look round and begin to walk up the tumulus. Jeanie's heart gave a little throb of alarm, as though her own thoughts might have brought a dead man forth from Grim's Grave. But no, this was a child, it was—surely! Sarah. Jeanie could see her now walking awkwardly up the slope, holding one arm very stiffly at her side, as though she had something concealed beneath her coat. Jeanie was about to shout to her, but something in that furtive awkwardness prevented her. She lingered in the road, unwilling to go on, yet loth to interfere. What could a child, and a nervous child too, be doing at this hour alone among the conifers on Grim's Grave?

Jeanie hesitated and then, opening the gate into Cole Harbour meadow, made briskly for the tumulus. She was a little breathless when, having rasped her legs on a bramble, stumbled in a rabbit-hole concealed in a tussock of coarse grass, and clambered up the irregular, coney-mined side of the mound, she found herself inside the ring of pines. On the summit there within the circle of trees, Sarah Molyneux was kneeling, digging with furious energy in a rabbit-hole. Her face was red with her efforts, but her lips were a thin set line, her eyes fixed. Her mackintosh lay in a heap on the grass beside her. Jeanie heard her utter suddenly in a cracked voice:

“Oh hide it for ever, Grim! Don't let anybody ever find it! Oh, Grim—”

She caught sight of Jeanie and with a little shaken cry jumped to her feet, putting out her hands as if to fend Jeanie off.

“It's only me, Sarah, it's only me!” said Jeanie, stepping out from the shadow of the pines on to the summit of the tumulus. Sarah's face had gone quite white, the sweat of her exertions stood on her forehead like sickly pearls.

Jeanie spoke as matter-of-factly as possible:

“What are you doing, ducky, in this queer place?”

“Go away, go away! Can't I be left alone?
Do
go away, Jeanie!” cried the child in a cracked hysterical voice. She took up the earthy trowel she had instinctively tried to hide at Jeanie's approach. “I—I'm just playing a game. By myself. I don't want people. I'm all right. I—”

She glanced with an obvious agony of anxiety towards her mackintosh lying there on the ground. But it was too late. Jeanie had approached close enough to see that something long and straight lay hidden beneath that mackintosh.

“Oh Sarah, something's worrying you!”

“It isn't!
Do go away
, Jeanie!”

“How can I, and leave you like this? It's nearly dark! What
are
you up to? What've you got under your mack?”

Instantly Sarah flew to stand guard over her mackintosh.

“Nothing!”

“Oh, Sarah, surely you can trust me!” uttered Jeanie. “I'll help you, whatever it is!” she rashly added, and saw Sarah waver.

But there was a third upon the scene. As if one of the trees had taken on human life, Superintendent Finister moved quietly forward from among them. Turning, Jeanie saw him standing there, tall, narrow and saturnine in his blue cloth which in this last lingering of daylight had an intense deep quality of colour. Poor Sarah, to her the appearance of the tall policeman upon the scene was, it seemed, like the signing of a death-warrant She swallowed once, stood up straight, letting her trowel drop, and stood very still.

“Rabbiting, Miss Molyneux? Or what?”

Superintendent Finister looked pointedly at Sarah's mackintosh.

“Rabbits have been a perfect plague here this year,” he went on. “The country's stiff with them. If you've been for a walk round Cleedons, Miss Halliday, I expect you saw our men?”

“Your men?” echoed Jeanie blankly, but Sarah, she noticed, flinched.

“Our men dragging the pond on the common.”

With the fear of new horrors as yet unknown to her, Jeanie stammered:

“No. What for?”

“For the weapon, you know. It must be somewhere.”

“Oh, the weapon! Of course!”

Sarah was as still as a stick. Her stillness was more noticeable than movement. Jeanie, putting an arm around her shoulders, felt her whole body stiff as wood.

“We think now the murderer probably hid it immediately after the murder. And of course the pond's the obvious place. Too obvious. Still, a criminal in a panic doesn't always avoid the obvious so well as he'd like to. But they haven't found anything yet.”

The superintendent spoke with a kind of dreamy detachment.

“What do you expect to find?”

“Well, there's this pistol missing from the gun-room at Cleedons, and nobody seems to know anything about it. There on the morning of the murder, so the housemaid says. Not there since. Somebody must know something about that. A Colt automatic target-pistol. That's what's missing from the gun-room, and that's what we should expect to find. But I keep an open mind. It wouldn't surprise me to find a miniature rifle. Not so easily hidden as an automatic, you know. More likely to be thrown away on the spur of the moment. This Colt automatic that's missing from the gun-room is only ten and a half inches long. It would go in a coat-pocket. But a miniature rifle's a thing you can't hide so easily. You might easily get in a real fright and throw it in a pond or push it down a drain.”

He spoke gently, sadly, and his eyes never left that mackintosh of Sarah's.

“Or a rabbit-hole,” he added softly.

He looked thoughtfully at Sarah, who was staring straight in front of her. The trees that ringed the three of them round were quite dark now. This is the hour, thought Jeanie, for witchcraft and the visiting of tombs. She glanced at Sarah, and saw her lips silently move, and wondered whether she were appealing once again desperately to the spirits of the tumulus to help her. She shivered.

“It's cold.”

“Yes, and will be dark soon,” agreed Superintendent Finister. He looked paternally at Sarah. “I shouldn't do any more digging now. Let old Grim sleep in peace for to-night.”

He spoke kindly, and picking Sarah's mackintosh up from the ground held it out for her to put on. She made one jerk to prevent him, then gave it up and stood quite still.

“Hullo!” said Superintendent Finister without great surprise, looking at the small rifle which lay exposed upon the grass. 

Sarah said nothing for a moment. She shoved her arms down the sleeves of the coat that Finister still held out for her, and wrapped it round herself and remarked in a high, unnatural voice:

“I suppose we might as well go home, Jeanie. It's too dark to do any shooting now.”

With exaggerated nonchalance she stooped to pick the weapon up from the ground, but Finister was before her.

“Shooting!” echoed he with a faint smile, looking at the label on the stock. “You're a bit young for handling fire-arms, aren't you, missie?”

“Perhaps,” conceded Sarah. With dignity she added: “Could I have my rifle, please?” Her voice trembled.

“This isn't your rifle, my dear.”

“It is.”

Sarah held out her hand and looked Finister straight in the eyes. Her own eyes looked small and very dark. His were thoughtful, not unkindly. Jeanie murmured:

“Oh, Sarah dear!”

“It is,” repeated Sarah brazenly. “So give it me, please. I suppose a person can shoot rabbits on their own uncle's farm—” her voice faltered—“without being a criminal?”

“I suppose so too, my dear, but you haven't been shooting rabbits, and this isn't your rifle.”

“It is.”

“Come,” said Finister kindly. “Miss Molyneux, this is no use. I shall find out soon enough, you know, whom this rifle belongs to.”

“My uncle. It's not
exactly
mine, but—”

“Missie, we know all the guns your uncle had at Cleedons, and only one of them's missing, a target-pistol.”

“This is a new one. He bought it a day or two before he—before he—”

Finister shook his head.

“Is this any use, ducky?” asked Jeanie. She was startled at the look the child threw her.

“You said you'd help me!”

“But, Sarah!”

Feeling a traitor, Jeanie looked helplessly at Finister.

“Come,” said he briskly. “Why do you suppose I followed you up here, my dear?”

“Don't call me your dear!”

Taken a trifle aback, Finister laughed shortly.

“Well! Why do you suppose I followed you up here? I was watching my men at work on the pond on the common. I saw you come out through the gap in the hedge of the Cleedons orchard. You looked around. I shouldn't have noticed you particularly, perhaps, only you looked around you as if you didn't want to be seen. You couldn't see me, I was among the trees at the edge of the pond. I saw you stoop down and disappear. You crawled under the culvert, didn't you, that crosses the ditch there? When you came out, you had something in your hand—a rifle, I thought. You put it under your coat very quickly and sauntered off. I followed you. I followed you through the orchard and the barnyard and across the road. So you see, my d— Miss Molyneux, it would really be better to tell me all about it.”

There was a pause. Two little spots of red burnt in the child's pale cheeks. She did not look at Finister nor at Jeanie, but at the tree-tops as if she envied the birds. She said brokenly:

“I shan't tell you a damned thing.”

“Well, miss, you know we can easily find out.”

“Find out and be damned. Can I have my rifle?”

“No. I'm keeping that.”

“Keep it then, and go to hell with it.”

“Oh Sarah!” murmured Jeanie, as they made their way down the side of the tumulus and up the bank among the tearing brambles and spiky sapling-stumps almost invisible in the dusk. “What's the trouble? Hadn't you better tell me?”

“So that you can go straight and tell Finister, I suppose,” said Sarah coldly. She stumbled over a rabbit-hole and recovered herself, with dignity.

Jeanie sighed. Confederacy between the adult and the child had its difficulties.

“I might want to,” she admitted. “But I could promise not to, if you liked.”

“To the death?”

“Well—it would depend whose death,” said Jeanie, feebly joking.

They passed out of the gate of the Cole Harbour meadow on to the chilly, wind-whistling road. Sarah paused, carefully replacing the chain.

“No, Jeanie, I can't,” she muttered at last. “It isn't only me, you see. There's another person.”

Jeanie stopped and looked at her young friend's face, pearly white in the dusk with huge dark eyes that evaded her glance.

“Have you promised that other person not to tell?”

“No, but—”

“Then change your mind and tell me!”

Something in Sarah's nervous contraction when Jeanie laid a gentle hand upon her shoulder, something in the sudden focusing of her cold, fearful glance, her movement like a startled animal's woke an echo in Jeanie's mind. She remembered how she had seen Sarah shrink and run from another person's well-meant caress. Her hand on Sarah's stiff shoulder became very still. They looked at one another. A sick depression came upon Jeanie, a premonition of horror. All very well to offer so genially to disperse poor little Sarah's worry! What if it should prove undispersable, a horror capable of enveloping Jeanie and Cleedons and all Handleston in its foul mist?

“Oh Sarah,” uttered Jeanie. “Was that rifle Marjorie Dasent's?”

It did not need Sarah's too quick, too violent denial, the terrified contraction of her pupils, to tell Jeanie that indeed it was. They stood in silence, looking at one another. Jeanie recalled Marjorie's collapse at the inquest, the obvious fear that had looked out of her eyes at Jeanie over the lighting of a cigarette, Tamsin's story of her scene with Molyneux. Oh, the thing was horrible, and going to be worse! In the midst of her horror Jeanie noted it as an odd thing that she felt no particular moral revulsion from Marjorie Dasent now that she saw her as a murderess. She thought of her with the mixture of pity, aversion and embarrassment with which a healthy person may contemplate one hideously ill.