There May Be Danger (10 page)

“Heck, Uncle, where do you think Auntie and I could have put him, when there isn't a bedroom in the house apart from our own that isn't just crawling with painters and white-washers?” demanded Rosaleen. And Mrs. Morrison even more vigorously repudiated the implication of inhospitality.

“I was never so ashamed in my life as when I had to say we hadn't room for him, after the way you invited him, Douglas, but where there's a guest there surely has to be a bed! He
was
an outstandingly nice young man, though. I wonder where he got to in the end. He said he was going to try Llanhalo down the road.”

“You can bet your life, Ellida, that if he tried Llanhalo, he tried in vain,” said Mr. Morrison sadly. “I cannot see Gideon Atkins warming an archaeologist, however youthful and agreeable, in his bosom. He made it quite clear to me some time ago that he regards us antiquaries as little higher in the scale of creation than the caterpillar.” 

“Well, I hope that nice young specimen hasn't crawled on too far,” said Rosaleen regretfully. “He said he'd come over one afternoon to tea. I'd be real heartbroken to think I wasn't going to see him again!”

“Your heartbreak at his having eluded you, Rosaleen, would be nothing to my heartbreak at missing a talk with him about the antiquities of this interesting district. I don't often get a chance of a chat with a brother antiquarian, and this young man Kemp, though still in the bud, indubitably knew his subject.”

Kate dropped her cigarette. It went first on her lap and then on to the stone flags, from which Mr. Morrison retrieved it and insisted on throwing it away and giving her another.

“Did you say his name was Kemp?” asked Kate.

“That
was
his patronymic. Christian name, Colin.”

The absurd Kate, although this time prepared for the name she heard, nearly dropped her second cigarette at the sound of it, and was much annoyed with herself for doing so.

“I know him. Or rather, I used to,” she said. “I wonder what he's doing in this part of the world. I thought he was in South America.”

This time it was Rosaleen who dropped, not her cigarette, but her petrol lighter. She laughed merrily as she picked it up.

“This dropping things seems to be infectious, doesn't it? Fancy that nice young archaeologist being a friend of your, Miss Mayhew! If we'd known, we'd have found a corner for him somewhere, if he had to sleep on the table! And fancy him having been in South America, Uncle Doug! Did he tell you that?”

“I don't remember that he did, Rosa. Owing to your aunt's preoccupation with the bed-famine, our period of conversation was strictly limited. Well, it's too bad to think we drove away a friend of Miss Mayhew's. But maybe he hasn't gone far. Did he know you were going to be in these parts?”

“Oh, no! I haven't heard from him for more than a year,” said Kate, still feeling slightly flustered and extremely annoyed with herself: What was there about Colin Kemp to make anybody's heart give that absurd little jump which had caused her to drop her cigarette and, she feared, become the colour of the vulgarest kind of pink carnation? Kate did not often blush, but when she did, she blushed thoroughly. And I haven't
seen
him,” she added brightly, “for over two years.”

“Well, absence makes the heart grow fonder, doesn't it,” said Mr. Morrison, fitting a cigarette into his long ivory holder. The perfect matter-of-factness with which he spoke convinced Kate that she was indeed carnation to the eyebrows. She was not, however, going to be daunted by foolish behaviour of her heart into changing the subject.

“Colin must have enjoyed seeing this house,” she said with composure. “But, of course, what he
really
likes is a good tumulus. Gwyn Lupton tells me that you've got an old coin he found on the tumulus at Pentrewer, Mr. Morrison. He seemed to think you wouldn't mind showing it to me, and I'd love to see it.”

“My dear Miss Mayhew, I should be just delighted!”

“I don't know much about old coins—just a bit, through spending a good many hours in Dorchester Museum with Colin. It must be something unusual, from what Gwyn Lupton says.

“It's a silver penny of Ceowulf, 874, as far as I can tell,” said Mr. Morrison, looking quizzically at her as if to test her knowledge.

“Really? That's rather exciting, isn't it?”

“Ceowulf a friend of yours?”

Kate laughed.

“A friend of Colin's. Slight acquaintance of mine. King of Mercia, wasn't he?”

Mr. Morrison's quizzical look became tinged with a humorous respect.

“Why, you're quite a numismatist! It isn't in very good state, this coin, but I thought I'd risk a little on its purchase, as Mr. Lupton seemed to prefer a more modern coinage.”

“I'd love to see it.”

Rosaleen jumped up.

“You'd like to see the house, too, wouldn't you? I expect you've seen a great many lovely old English houses, but you know it's still new and exciting to us.”

It was new and exciting to Kate, too. The Veault was much larger than it had appeared from the backyard approach. On the first storey there was a delightful long gallery which was, Rosaleen said, to be the main night nursery. Besides this gallery, there seemed to be innumerable bedrooms, both large and tiny, and mostly leading out of one another, so that by the time Kate and Rosaleen were back on the staircase landing, they seemed to have made a kind of circular tour without once retracing their steps. The second floor repeated the first floor, with three little bedrooms over the gallery, and above the second floor were the attics, dark, rambling, with swallow nests in the bare rafters, web-smeared windows and an elaborate arrangement of queen-posts and tie-beams. A brick panel in the back wall had been taken out for repairs. Kate looked out through it upon the great stone chimney-stack with the scaffolding round it that she had seen from the yard. A good many of the wide old floorboards, ingrained with the grey dust of centuries, were up, exposing the cobwebbed joists below.

“Uncle Doug doesn't let the men re-lay so much as a board without investigating among the joists for hidden treasure,” said Rosaleen. “So far he's found enough husks to keep a family in breakfast-cereals for a year, innumerable spiders, a metal staybone of the Edwardian period, a broken celluloid comb and a mummified rat. But hope springs eternal in the hooman breast. He still thinks he'll be rewarded one of these days with a sliding panel and a skeleton.”

Kate lingered on the narrow stairs.

“I don't know anything about old houses, but I feel this staircase is
very
old.”

Rosaleen patted her lightly on the back.

“But you really are quite an antiquarian!” she said. “You're quite right, honey. This part of the house and the hall and kitchen are remains of an older mediaeval manor that the Veault, as you see it, got built on to some time in Good Queen Bess's day. The way you tell, is chiefly something to do with the timber framing, so Gwyn Lupton was telling me. You see these long upright timbers in the wall here, set so close together without any cross-pieces? Well, that's mediaeval, it seems. Where the timbers are set out square, with lots of space for bricks or wattle in between, that's later. And the bigger the spaces and the thinner the timbers, the later you can bet your boots it is. They were real lavish with oak in mediaeval days. Well, here we are in the kitchen again. Let's creep through to the hall very, very quietly, or Gwyn Lupton in the scullery will hear us and come out and fix us with his eye and start telling us a piece as long as the Ancient Mariner. I'm like you, I just adore that man, but I prefer to choose my own times for sitting at his feet.”

To Kate's disappointment, Mr. Morrison was not able, after all, to show her the silver penny of Ceowulf. He had recollected he said, that a friend he had shown it to on his recent visit to London had asked to be allowed to keep it a short while and show it to a numismatist, and that he had agreed.

“Perhaps it was a trifle rash of me,” he admitted, “in view of the nocturnal proceedings over London at this disturbed period of history. But, as I was cheerfully leaving my friend in London, I felt that to refuse to leave my coin would scarcely be preserving the doo proportion of things. I hope he'll mail it on to me soon. Are you staying long in Hastry, Miss Mayhew?”

“Well—I don't know,” replied Kate, and explained as well as she could what had brought her here.

She was getting into the habit of watching people's reactions to the information that she was searching for a lost boy who was nothing to her but a photograph on a poster and an appeal for help. Miss Brentwood had obviously thought her amiably insane. Mr. and Mrs. Howells had taken her mission as the most natural thing in the world. The woman in charge of the County Library had simply not accepted the idea, and had continually referred to Sidney, in all good faith, as “your little nephew”. Aminta in Aminta-like fashion, had shown no curiosity and very little interest.

The Morrisons looked at her, and at one another, in silence for a moment.

“Say, I think your real name must be Donna Quixote de la Mancha,” said Mr. Morrison then, admiringly. And Mrs. Morrison said gently:

“My dear! But that poor li'l boy's been searched for
everywhere
!”

“Not everywhere, Auntie,” said Rosaleen, looking thoughtfully at Kate, “because he hasn't been found. And he can scarcely have been de-materialised.”

“De-materialised!” echoed Mr. Morrison. “Well, now, for any observations on the possibility or otherwise of de-materialisation, consult the gentleman who called on me this afternoon. He was, as I have intimated, an expert.”

“Davis Pentrewer, as they call him,” said Rosaleen thoughtfully. “Well—maybe you've spoken wisdom in jest, Uncle Doug. Davis Pentrewer is hand-in-glove with the gipsies, they tell me. But there, I suppose that old idea of the child that gets stolen by the gipsies is just a li'l bit out of date nowadays, isn't it? I suppose this kid Sidney couldn't be being held to ransom by toughs?”

“Nobody could pay a ransom worth the risk. His father's a captain in the Merchant Navy, and his great-aunt lets rooms in a house in Bayswater.”

“Well, I must say I think you're real magnificent, Miss Mayhew.”

“Oh no, I haven't anything to do just now.”

“No, but when you don't
have
to look for the kid at all, to be so
grandly
hopeful!” said Rosaleen, half-sadly, getting up as Kate shook hands with Mrs. Morrison and bade her good-bye. “Most of us weaker mortals like our ventures to be just a li'l less forlorn!”

The word struck a tiny knell in Kate's heart. Rosaleen was a shrewd, sensible girl. Was she herself truly as hopelessly lacking in realism as, lying awake in the small hours, she had feared? No. Sidney Brentwood, or his body, was
somewhere
under the autumn sun. And the question of whether Kate
had
to look for him, had been settled all in a flash in the Edgware Road the day before yesterday.

Rosaleen and Nurse Maud, who emerged from the kitchen damp-handed, turning down her neat cuffs, both accompanied Kate up to the field-gate.

“If I can ever help you in your search, command me, honey! Anyway, we'll be seeing you again—and again, I hope!”

Rosaleen and Maud leant against the gate as Kate went off across the field-path, The high wind which was still tearing joyfully across the sky, carrying a chill with it now that evening was approaching, blew their voices after Kate so strongly that she half-thought for a second that Rosaleen was calling her back. But it was to Maud that Rosaleen was speaking.

“What did you want to go pulling Humphries' leg like that for?”

“Well, I was irritated, Rosa! I don't like the way the man looks at you!” replied the nurse.

Rosaleen's fresh laughter followed Kate up the slope.

“Anybody hearing you might think you were jealous on old Major Everyman's account! Or at least, anybody
looking
at you might!”

Kate could not help turning her head to look at Maud in the distance and see what it was that so manifested jealousy in her looks. But she looked just as usual, her white coif fluttering in the wind, and as Kate looked back she raised her hand and waved in a friendly manner. Had Nurse Maud, then, a secret tenderness for Major Everyman? If so, it certainly showed itself oddly!

But a secret tenderness was apt to show itself oddly, and who should know it better than Kate, who, with the utmost manifestation of lightheartedness, had let Colin Kemp go to South America without her? Kate forgot Maud, and Rosaleen, and Major Everyman, and thought about Colin all the way home.

The track at Pentrewer looked very dark and secret when she passed it, with the high darkling hills between it and the sun. Two rough ponies were grazing a little way up the track, and beyond a hedge Kate caught sight as she passed of the gipsy caravan, and a blue drift of woodsmoke. The gipsies were evidently spending the night near their relations at Pentrewer.

Kate, having ascertained that the school break was at half-past-eleven, decided the next morning to go and see Sidney Brentwood's schoolmaster, and, while she was about it, some of Sidney's contemporaries and friends.

“Mrs. Howells, I suppose it's no use asking if you've got any sweets in the shop?”

“Well, I think you are lucky, there was a few pounds of toffee come in this morning, and if it's for the schoolchildren you can have half-a-pound if you wish!” Mrs. Howells added, when she had weighed out the half-pound: “Now the boys and girls will be all swarming over my shop in the dinner-hour like ants when they smells honey, but never mind—I would rather it was them than Miss Gilliam and some others I knows as is always in here after sweets.”

She tipped the little waxed-paper and bright tinfoil-wrapped cubes into a paper bag, and handing it to Kate, added pensively: “It was toffees like these that Sidney had in his pocket when he went off that night.”