The Devil at Saxon Wall Page 11

  ‘I could see you were a gentleman the first time I set eyes on you. So let bygones be bygones, say I.’

  ‘Yes, but hang it, that’s all very well,’ said Jones. She waited patiently, but all he could add, in the way of protest, were the words: ‘I shall have to discharge you, you know, if you drink to excess. I really can’t—I mean—well, it doesn’t do, does it?’

  ‘I wasn’t drunk,’ said Mrs Passion sullenly. They left it at that. After a moment she rose and walked out of the room, pausing at the door to ask respectfully what he would have for lunch.

  ‘Well, what you’ve got, I suppose,’ said Jones. ‘There’s a little boy coming. Can you make it enough for two?’

  ‘For twenty-two of the kind you mean, Mr Jones,’ she answered. ‘It’s the little nephew, I suppose?’

  ‘It’s the little nephew,’ Jones replied, and looked at her to see how she would take it. But her face remained impassive. Jones got his hat and, thrusting the doctor’s message into his pocket, walked to the village post office to send a telegram. The postmistress, greatly interested, took it and read aloud to her daughter Miriam.

  ‘Bradley Stone House Wandles Parva Bucks badly needed Saxon Wall Hants Hannibal Jones with love.’

  A second telegraph form bore an identical message, but was addressed to Mrs Bradley’s London house.

  ‘It’s over a shilling for each of them, anyway,’ said the postmistress angrily to Jones. Jones grinned and nodded.

  ‘Exactly how much over?’ he inquired. The postmistress counted each message twice, sucked a pencil, made calculations on a blotting pad, and finally charged him, as she put it, two and sevenpence the pair.

  She brooded long over the messages when she had transmitted them, but they remained mysterious as pain, and just about as irritating.

  Jones got back to his cottage twenty-five minutes before the doctor arrived with the little boy. The lad’s resemblance to Mrs Passion was certainly extraordinary. Jones studied him while they lunched. The boy had thick black hair, a pale, expressionless face, and looked as strong as a little bull. He ate hungrily, but not greedily, and his table manners were above criticism. His behaviour was easy and natural, and he accepted Jones in the oddly attractive way in which young boys do accept men who reciprocate their unsentimental liking.

  Jones took him out for a walk in the afternoon, but, before they went, Mrs Pike insisted upon their sampling her home-brewed ginger beer. Henry Pike served them. Jones looked from boy to boy; and, acting on impulse, said:

  ‘Get your hat and come out for a walk with us, Henry.’

  They walked in silence towards Guthrum Down, but before they reached the cart-tracks which led on to the common, Henry stopped short and said:

  ‘My mother said I was to ask you if so be you’d seen the gentleman’s corp, Mr Jones.’

  ‘The what, old man?’

  ‘The dead gentleman that’s supposed to be this little boy’s uncle, sir. The gentleman——’

  ‘I’m not a little boy,’ said Richard. ‘But I should like to see the body, if we may.’

  ‘Well, you may not,’ said Jones shortly. There was a short pause, and then Richard asked politely:

  ‘He was knocked on the head in the dining-room, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Now how on earth,’ said the exasperated Jones, ‘do you know that?’

  ‘Your servant told me while you were trying to pump up some water so that we could wash.’

  ‘Oh, did she? What else did she say?’

  ‘That I bore a marked resemblance to my mother.’

  ‘My mother said she didn’t believe the corp was Mr Middieton,’ ventured Henry. ‘She said that seeing was believing.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Jones. ‘And, no doubt, also, the police know what they’re doing, old chap.’

  Richard was observing the landscape.

  ‘What’s that hill?’ he inquired.

  ‘Godrun Down,’ said Henry. ‘Her’s bewitched, that hill is. The long thin man live up top of she.’

  ‘That’s the kind of tale to tell kids and suckers,’ said Richard, haughtily. Henry looked at him, puzzled by this complete indifference to one of the articles of the village children’s creed.

  ‘That’s right enough,’ he protested. ‘The long thin man.’ He looked at Jones. ‘My mother thought Mr Jones was he till parson told her different. And so did she think the doctor was Old Satan, only that’s what they call parson too and all.’

  Both boys stared at Jones, taking in his height and his drooping slenderness.

  ‘The long thin man,’ said Richard, meditating. ‘Hm! Not bad. Your mother must be rather observant,’ he added politely to Henry.

  ‘Mrs Fluke always says it’s the simple ones that see the most in the end,’ said Henry, nodding, ‘because folks don’t hide up things in front of simple folks like they would in front of you or me.’

  ‘What, for instance, would they hide from you and me?’ asked Jones. But Henry shook his head. The remark itself had impressed him, but its application had escaped his memory. At this point Richard noticed a Clifton Blue butterfly, and both boys went in chase of it.

  ‘Well, what did you think of Henry Pike?’ Jones asked his guest when they were back at the cottage, and Henry, inarticulate because of a shilling which Jones had given him, had taken his leave of them. Richard, eyeing with great interest the tea which Mrs Passion was placing upon the table, said politely that Henry seemed all right. Perceiving that it was not reasonable to expect his whole-hearted attention until some, at least, of Mrs Passion’s efforts to please the guest and tempt his appetite had received just consideration, Jones seated himself at the table.

  ‘Good gracious, Mrs Passion,’ he said. ‘Four kinds of cake? And three kinds of jam?’

  ‘And a nice egg, Mr Jones,’ said Mrs Passion, dumping the egg-cups down. ‘We must keep the young gentleman’s strength up whilst he’s with us.’

  ‘Not half,’ murmured the young gentleman, helping himself to bread and butter and watching Mrs Passion as she served him with tea the colour of a black boot, and sweetened it lavishly.

  ‘What a kind woman she is,’ observed Richard, when she had gone. ‘She seems to like my being here.’

  ‘Yes, it makes a change for her,’ Jones agreed. ‘Would you have liked it if Henry had stayed to tea?’

  Richard, chewing thoughtfully, considered the question.

  ‘Probably have embarrassed him, don’t you think?’ he suggested tentatively.

  ‘Why so?’ Jones inquired.

  ‘Well, he seemed a nice chap, and he’s sure to be caddish at the table, I should imagine, and probably knows it, don’t you think?’

  Jones was amused and impressed. He gazed at the child, comparing him with Passion and his wife. Physically, of course, it looked more than possible. Mentally, he decided, it seemed the reverse. Besides, this boy was attractive. The lack of expression in his face was more than compensated for by the aptness of his remarks, and his candid, intelligent views. They conversed no more until the meal was ended. Then Jones said:

  ‘What time do you think of going to bed and so on?’ Richard considered this, too.

  ‘Eightish,’ he said. ‘I’m in training. Mustn’t overdo things, you know.’

  ‘In training?’ said Jones. ‘That’s fine. What for?’

  ‘Boxing. I’ve brought a set of gloves down with me. I shall have to find someone to spar with.’

  He cast an experienced eye round the sitting-room.

  ‘The light’s not too good in here, I should imagine, but I dare say it will do to spar in. How big is it?’

  Jones replied humbly that he did not know, but that they could measure it in the morning. He inquired what competition the other was entering.

  ‘Oh, only at school,’ replied Richard magnificently. ‘I want a Public Schools Championship later on. That’s one advantage of not having a mater, by the way. Don’t you think so?’

  Jones replied that the point had never rec
eived from him the consideration which he now perceived to be its due. Richard shook his head soberly.

  ‘A number of our men, even our bigger men, find their maters a fearful disadvantage,’ he said. ‘They do fuss so, the majority of them. Of course, they have to be educated up to a sport like boxing. But it’s very bad luck on the fellows who have to educate them. And, of course, a mater will simply ruin your training, if she gets the chance. Takes you out, and stuffs you with sweets and so on.’

  Jones, smoking his pipe, nodded gloomily in sympathy, and said that he supposed it was so.

  ‘I’ll do my exercises now, if you don’t mind. I think I have digested my tea,’ Richard observed, two hours later, after a most companionable silence during which he had drawn elaborately and with great mechanical exactitude, every type of motorcycle on the market.

  ‘Carry on,’ said Jones. ‘Oh, by the way, I’m afraid I can’t offer you a bath. We’re rather ridiculously short of water.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ replied Richard. ‘I’ve got my training towel with me. I’ll just have a good rub down, then, after my exercises.’

  He disappeared upstairs. Jones could hear him stamping around in the front bedroom overhead. In about three minutes he reappeared, dressed in vest and running drawers. His exercises were complicated, exhausting, and obviously his own invention, and he performed them as one carrying out a religious rite.

  ‘Feel that,’ he said to Jones proudly at the end, flexing the muscles of his arms. Jones felt them. At that moment Mrs Passion came in.

  ‘How does the young gentleman like his bath water, please?’ she said.

  ‘Bath water?’ ejaculated Jones. ‘But how on earth have you coaxed bath water out of this thirsty land?’

  Mrs Passion looked out of the window.

  ‘Thirsty land, rivers of water,’ she murmured. Then turning her eyes on Jones, she added:

  ‘Isn’t there a dewpond on the top of Godrun Down?’

  ‘You haven’t been up to the top of Guthrum Down for water?’

  ‘Young gentlemen must have their bath,’ said Mrs Passion impassively. ‘I hanna been brought up in good service without knowing that. We took the yoked milk-pails up there, Passion and mother and me, so there’s a drop over as you can wash yourself in, Mr Jones, if you’ve a mind. Will he take his bath in here or in the kitchen?’

  ‘But I thought you’d quarrelled with your mother,’ Jones observed. Mrs Passion looked at a spot on the wall just above his head.

  ‘Mother have her own good reasons for wanting to go up Godrun Down in the heat of the summer, Mr Jones.’

  There appeared to be something significant behind the words, but their meaning was lost to Jones. There was a pause whilst he wrestled with an idea which eluded him. At last he gave it up and shook his head.

  ‘No doubt,’ he said. ‘And how goes the nasty smell?’

  ‘It went from me with Mr Middleton’s death.’

  ‘Oh, really? How was that?’ Mrs Passion looked from Jones to the black-browed Richard who was waiting to be told where to have his bath. Then she replied:

  ‘“Night unto night showeth knowledge.” And what’s more, Mr Jones, someone has ill-wished the vicar all over again.’

  ‘Why, how do you mean?’ asked Jones. Mrs Passion put a pudgy hand on her brow and murmured in ominous tones:

  ‘The rose-window in the church have been took away, and the vicar have gashed himself dreadful on the forrid with the glass.’

  ‘Morbid symbolism,’ said Jones automatically.

  ‘Very likely. I bean’t up in they new diseases. But it’s ill-wishing the poor young innocent man that’s done it, all the same.’

  Jones nodded. Richard said politely: ‘Would the kitchen be the best place, do you think? Perhaps it wouldn’t matter if I splashed a bit in there.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Mrs Passion. Jones could hear them talking as Mrs Passion poured out the heated water for the child. Then she returned to the sitting-room.

  ‘I’ll be going now, then, Mr Jones. Could I use the front door, being that the young gentleman is having the use of the kitchen?’

  ‘Surely,’ said Jones. He heard the front door close behind her, and twisted his long thin body in the chair to watch her walking down the garden path between the over-heavy roses and the foxgloves and the brilliant poppy-heads. Thetis, thought Jones, must certainly have been the most fearful and most desperate of women. He wondered what, in Richard, symbolised Achilles’ heel.

  A little later, Mortmain came to see him. He shook his head when Jones inquired how the vicar was.

  ‘Between you and me,’ he said, ‘he’s insane. But I want another opinion.’

  ‘I’ve sent for Mrs Lestrange Bradley,’ said Jones.

  ‘Good. Yes. He wouldn’t allow Nao to admit me, and when I looked in at him through the window he came and positively gibbered at me through the glass. He had a great bandage round his head and completely over one eye, and informed me that he was the Prophet Mohammed, or something else Biblical.’

  ‘Biblical, you heathen Chinee?’ said Jones, who had been brought up in the bosom, flinty but well-informed, of the Welsh Methodist Church. ‘You mean Moses, not Mohammed. He’s got water on the brain, Hallam has. Besides, Moses was not a prophet, he was a patriarch.’

  ‘I knew it began with M,’ said the doctor meekly.

  ‘So does mutton-head,’ said Jones, with the rudeness permitted to friends.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Poor Brother Tom had an Accident this time Twelvemonth, and so clever a made fellow he was, that I could not save him from those fleaing Rascals the Surgeons; and now, poor Man, he is among the Otamys at Surgeons Hall.’

  JOHN GAY

  The Beggar’s Opera. Act II, Scene I.

  MRS PASSION HAD not been gone for more than half an hour when a restlessness, due, possibly, to the warmth of the summer evening, took possession of Jones and compelled him to the first of that series of actions which had, later, such extraordinary results.

  He sat and listened for a time, to Richard, splashing and reciting in his bath, and as his ear became accustomed to the rhythm of the iambic pentameters, Jones found himself listening keenly to as excellent a rendering of Mark Antony’s oration as he had ever heard.

  He went to the door that separated sitting-room from kitchen and passed through. Richard was standing up in the bath-tub, a loofah of terrifying dimensions in his right hand, his chin raised slightly, his eyes half-closed, his expressionless face woodenly Japanese. His child’s voice, heavy and flat with the tragedy of the lines, was saying slowly:

  ‘For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar’s angel:’

  ‘Go to bed,’ said Jones. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Saying my part.’

  ‘Well, say it in bed. Washed yourself yet?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Well, out you get, then. All right. I’ll see about emptying that water. I want it for my garden. Give me the towel. Here, you have this small one. Got your pyjamas handy? All right, I’ll go and get them. Dry your hair a bit.’

  Richard safely in bed and fortified with biscuits and a drink of milk and soda, Jones returned to the sitting-room to read. But suddenly he put down the book, went to the table drawer and took out notepaper and envelopes. He wrote two letters, one to his wife, the other to his lawyer.

  The first read:

  ‘I’ve found a boy of ten I want to adopt. What do you say?’

  The second ran:

  ‘How does one proceed to adopt an orphan boy ten years of age? He is supposed to be the nephew of the murdered Middleton, but I believe him to be the son of a couple in the village here.’

  He decided to post the letters immediately instead of waiting until the morning. He stamped the envelopes and then went upstairs on tip-toe. Richard was not asleep.

  ‘I want to go as far as the post office,’ said Jones.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You don’t mind being left?�
�

  Richard grinned. Jones grinned too.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I knew you didn’t, really.’

  He decided, all the same, to be as quick as he could. But on the way back from the post office he encountered old Mrs Fluke. She was bent nearly double and had an empty sack flung over her ancient shoulders. A black cat trailed behind her like her shadow.

  Jones accosted her.

  ‘And what are you doing out at this time in the evening?’ His voice was loud and good-humoured. The old woman cackled and wagged her head. The cat walked round Jones’ legs and purred, and rubbed itself against him.

  ‘It be parson,’ said old Mrs Fluke, in a voice of surprising shrillness. ‘He be suffering from they plagues of frogs again.’

  ‘What plagues of frogs?’ said Jones, remembering the bloated-looking corpses which the vicar had interred, and beginning to feel slightly sick.

  ‘You should read your Bible, young man, and then so be you’d know,’ retorted Mrs Fluke. ‘I was going up there with Malkie and my little sack to take his frogs away, but now I ain’t a-going to.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll go myself,’ said Jones. ‘Give me the sack.’

  She handed it over, chuckling. The black cat, evidently in two minds as to whether its allegiance lay to the sack or to the old woman, walked in a circle, communing audibly with its sense of duty, and then elected to follow the sack. A slight but unmistakable odour of stale fish which clung about the receptacle explained to Jones the reason of its choice.

  He thought of the little boy alone in the cottage, but reflected that he had taken the precaution of fastening the downstair windows before leaving him. He also had bolted the back door and locked the front one. There was small chance of the cottage catching fire in his absence, and if Mrs Passion happened to be taken by a wandering fit she could not get near enough to the boy to frighten him. All the same, Jones stopped at the doctor’s house and told him where he was going, and mentioned that the child was alone.

  ‘I’m glad you’re going to see the vicar,’ the doctor said. ‘He’s baddish. Ought to get right away from here for a bit, but I can’t persuade him of anything if he really won’t see me.’