Hangman's Curfew (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “Come with me, Lesley,” she said. “I want you to help me unpack. I’ve got something for you.”

  Once inside Gillian’s room, however, the two young ladies made no attempt to unpack. Lesley, the younger by two years, lay flat on her back on Gillian’s bed, rested her hands beneath her head, and said:

  “Go on. Tell me all about it.”

  “You must help me first,” said Gillian. “You read better than I do. You read aloud, out of this book, the numbers I tell you, and stop when I say so, and go on again when I say so, and don’t ask any questions or waste time. There’s a lot to get through.”

  At the end of two hours they had achieved the following result, which Gillian then read aloud:

  “There’s far too much of it,” said Lesley, laying aside the book. She yawned with fatigue, for some of the ballads had been long ones. “You’ve still got to dig out the bits that matter, and how on earth do you think you’re going to do that?”

  “Where’s your Ordnance map of the Border?” demanded Gillian.

  “Why, you borrowed it when you made up your mind to have a holiday up there. Don’t you remember? I sent it on to you, when you said you were leaving Aunt Adela.”

  “Goodness, yes! I’ll get it.”

  She burrowed into her suitcase, scattering items of silk underclothing, stockings, and toilet accessories much as a terrier scatters earth.

  “Here it is. Where’s a ruler or a pair of dividers, or something?”

  “Here’s a postcard and a pair of scissors. Chop off some straight bits. You don’t want to measure things, do you?”

  “No; only find some intersecting lines.”

  “OK, then. Let me chop.”

  “Mother will be coming in to say good night in a minute. We’ve been ages over this reading and writing stuff. I’ll get ready for bed. You do, too. Then you can sneak in here again when the family has gone to bed, and we’ll get on with the job.”

  This plan was carried out. The two, feeling as though they were once more engaged in the nefarious pastimes of childhood, smuggled themselves away until “visiting rounds” was over, and Lesley could return to her sister’s room.

  “The bearings are too many and too various,” Lesley again objected, when they had been working away for some time—the one with the Ordnance map, the other with the sketch-map which was printed on the inside cover of the Oxford Book of Ballads.

  “Mustn’t forget it’s still the hotel copy of the ballads,” muttered Gillian. “What did you say?” she added. “Oh, that! Well, look here—” with hazy recollections of forth-form geometry—”you can always prolong or extend your lines until another line crosses them, can’t you?”

  “Yes, but even then, you get more than one point of intersection if you use all these places you’ve written down.”

  “I bet Aunt Adela worked it out all right; and if she can, so can we. Bend your brains to it, my girl. I’m going to find out where that treasure is if it takes me all night to do it.”

  “Much better get a possible selection of places, and then go up there and visit them,” Lesley suggested.

  “That’s not a bad idea, either. Well, come on; let’s get on with it.”

  “Just one point then. What do you do with all these Adieu places?”

  “All those what?”

  “You know—all those bits you’ve written down under Locality that start with Adieu. Do you think it means leave them out?”

  “Well, why mention them, then?”

  “That’s just the trouble. You haven’t got enough to go on.”

  “Just now you said there was too much. Do the best you can. How do you think the sailors get on at sea?”

  “That’s all right how the sailors get on at sea. They shoot the moon. Roger told me all about it when he was home. Oh, by the way, your beastly Gerald’s married.”

  “Is he? Who to?”

  “Oh, nobody we know. She’s rich or something. Didn’t you see it in the papers?”

  “No. Haven’t looked at the papers much these last three weeks.”

  “Do you mind much?”

  “Mind what?”

  “Gerald.”

  “Gerald who? Oh—Gerald? Good heavens, no. I’m glad. Don’t waste time. Get on.”

  By two o’clock in the morning the maps had been criss-crossed with lines, but a motoring route had not been planned, because they could not agree upon one. The arguments, however, were amicable.

  “Mother will have a fit, you know,” said Gillian.

  “She won’t, as long as you don’t mention guns, and shoving young men out of bedroom windows. I’ve got another five weeks to get through before college. I might just as well spend them with you. Mother can’t say anything to that.”

  Gillian thought this, too. A spasm of conscience, which suggested that, as the elder, she ought not to lead a younger sister into danger, she soon contrived to soothe. That sort of thing had been all right when they were little children, she reminded herself. She had then received the blame for every untoward incident, which befell the pair of them. Yet Lesley, bigger and bolder, had often been the leader, and would now be invaluable if there were trouble in the north.

  She giggled, and suggested that they should make an early start.

  “We can’t go tomorrow too early,” Lesley objected. “Mother will have to be told, and she won’t be up before nine.”

  “All right. We must tell her at breakfast. I’ve left Cynthia’s sports in Newcastle. We can go up by train and fetch it, and tell mother we’re going to tour in it from there. It’s a good idea in every way, because we can take turns in driving. You go back to bed now. We ought to be able to start after lunch, with luck.”

  “Aunt Vera’s coming,” said Lesley.

  “Oh, bother! Still, it can’t be helped. She and Mother really prefer to be on their own without us. Funny sisters being such friends all their lives.”

  She punched her own sister lightly upon the shoulder.

  The light-hearted young, having managed to borrow from their mother enough money for two first-class fares, so that they could “have a bit of peace for some more map-reading,” as Lesley put it, made a swift hop to York on a good train, and another to Newcastle. They were in their double room at the hotel before midnight, and slept soundly.

  By eight next morning Gillian had breakfasted, and Lesley, who had gone out earlier, reported that a garage hand would bring round the car by nine. By half-past nine they were cruising northwards towards Berwick, which they had decided upon as their starting-point in their search for the house.

  “Wonder where Aunt Adela is now?” Gillian observed, at lunch. She spread out on the table the small map they had made from the Ordnance map and checked their position on it. They had been unable, after much argument in the train, and again as they drove north, to reach any conclusion as to where their objective might be. Yarrow Water and St. Mary’s Kirk, both marked on the map at the beginning of the book of ballads, seemed to be a good starting-point, however, they agreed, and so, from Berwick, thither they made their way. They came into Kelso through Swinton, Leitholm, and Ednam, went on to Selkirk and thence to St. Mary’s Loch, all the way beside Yarrow Water. It was a lovely drive, and they took it slowly through the long and winding valley, as the road turned gloriously among the hills.

  “Now what?” said Lesley, stopping the car on a by-road to Cockburn’s Castle.

  “Sure to be a hotel along the side of the loch,” said Gillian. “Let’s go there for tea, and ask them about a big house and people called Graeme. That ought to help, I should think.”

  “There’s plenty of time,” said Lesley. “Let’s have a walk. The car will be all right. I’ve parked it well off the road. I could stay here for weeks. It’s lovely. Look how green and smooth the hills are, and all the reflections in the loch!”

  “All right, then,” Gillian answered. “But we’ve taken longer than we thought we would since Selkirk. Still, one couldn’t hurry. Isn’t it lov
ely here! But we mustn’t be too long now. We’ve got to sleep somewhere, remember. No night driving for me in country I don’t know at all. A smash would put the finish on everything.”

  “It would certainly finish Mother,” said Lesley, grinning. “Better bring the Ordnance map, I suppose.”

  “Aunt Adela,” said Gillian, as they walked, “had some stuff in her notes about Biggar and Culter, but they’re further north than we are here. If we can’t find out anything at the hotel, I suppose we’d better go there and start again, but I’d rather we followed our own trail. It’s more fun.”

  They sat down and spread out the Ordnance map, compared it with the smaller map they made, and picked out the position of a hotel and an inn, both beside the loch. They soon identified these, and kept them in view as they climbed. They had seated themselves for a rest, and to look at the view of smooth hill slopes ending in gentle-tongued spurs as they met the smooth lake water, when Gillian suddenly said:

  “Lie flat a minute, Lesley. Now look down there on the road towards our car. Do you see two motor cycles?”

  “What’s more, I see two men. Don’t tell me Joshua and Geoffrey have hit our trail?” said Lesley.

  “I don’t know whether it’s them. It probably isn’t. I don’t know why two motorbikes should give me the jumps. I expect lots of people come here, but they do happen to be the right colour—”

  “If you can tell at this distance. You probably can’t. What do we do? Lie doggo until we spot the owners? They’ve probably gone on to the hotel.”

  “No, they haven’t,” said Gillian. “And they’re having a look at our car. Now what on earth do we do?”

  “Go back and ask them what they want. At least, I will. You stay here. They don’t know me from Adam, and we’re not a bit alike. If they mention they know the car, and ask after you, I shall say it’s my car, and I’m Cynthia. I suppose you mentioned Cynthia to Geoffrey, and the fact that you’d borrowed her sports?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I did. All right, then. I’m in London. I went back by train from York. I bet they know that already. Mr. Joshua must be pretty fly. Where will you take the car from here?”

  “To the hotel, I should think. You’ll have to go hungry and thirsty for a bit if you don’t want to meet them. Do you suppose they’re really on our trail?”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure. They might be on Aunt Adela’s track, for all we know, so I don’t think we ought to lose sight of them. On the other hand, it’s quite likely they’re simply prospecting, the same as we are.”

  “Then that means they don’t know where the house is, any more than we do, and, if that’s true, a lot of things go wrong, according to what you’ve told me. Oh, well, we might as well not worry. I’ll go down and do Horatius Keeping the Bridge. You keep an eye on me, and if I can, and the coast seems clear, I’ll signal you, and then come back and pick you up. Where does that road I parked the car on go to?…Yes, look…You can get round to Biggar that way. It makes a short cut, instead of going to Moffat. Work round to it, if you can, without being spotted, and I’ll pick you up when I’ve shed the two men. Rah! Rah!”

  And the spirited girl, crawling onwards until she was sixty yards from her sister, rose to her feet and began to stroll back towards the car.

  She had little difficulty in recognising Mr. Geoffrey from her sister’s description. The two men stood back from the car as she approached it, but as she got in and took the driver’s seat, Geoffrey came up and saluted. His motor-cycling helmet suited him. Except for the fact that his mouth was weak, he might have been a young airman.

  “I say, look here,” he said, “you must be Miss Cynthia—what?”

  “Sorry,” said Lesley, “your ’van.”

  The young man laughed, and put his hand on the door of the car.

  “No, but look here,” he said. “My name’s Devizes. Surely Gillian told you about me? I know this car. In fact, I’ve been out for a drive in it.”

  “Oh—Gillian?” said Lesley. “No, she didn’t mention you, except once.”

  “What did she say? Nothing very complimentary, I guess.”

  “It depends upon what kind of compliments you’re used to,” said Lesley, who could have kept up this kind of quarter­staff—it was too crude to be called fencing—all day long. “I’ll tell you what she said, and you can judge.”

  She saw, out of the tail of her eye, that the sandy-haired Mr. Joshua had come nearer.

  “She said she was sorry she’d left no address, as she would have enjoyed telling a man who thought he could leave her cold in Newcastle, and then wanted to climb in at her bedroom window in Edinburgh, exactly where he got off.”

  She looked severely upon Mr. Geoffrey, and then pulled the knob of the self-starter.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Mr. Geoffrey protested. “You tell her from me—”

  But Lesley had let in the clutch, and the car rolled forward towards the open moor, and then, reversing, returned towards the young men. Pulling it round when she was clear of the secondary road, Lesley, her brain working busily on the subject of how best to choke them off, and how to pick up her sister without their knowing that Gillian was in the vicinity, drove sedately towards the hotel.

  She left the car at the roadside, walked into the hotel, made up her mind in a second, and approached a young man whose open-necked shirt, knapsack, and ashplant proclaimed him to be a hiker. Lesley accosted him peremptorily.

  “Look here, I don’t know you, but would you do me a favour?”

  “Oh—yes?” replied the young man, on the slight rising inflection of the aesthete.

  “Come outside with me and get into my car. I’ve got to drive you a mile or two away from this hotel. Which way do you want to go?”

  “Oh—thanks. Across to Tweedsmuir, if I may.”

  “Come on, then. It’s quite all right—I mean, I’m not trying to kidnap you or anything—but there’s a man outside who wants a lift, and I don’t like the look of him, so I said I already had a passenger, only, of course, I haven’t.”

  “Oh—quite,” said the young man. “Why don’t we have tea together first? I mean, that would perfectly put him off. Or not?”

  “Well, yes, it would, but you’ve had yours, I expect.”

  “One’s alimentary canal is at your service,” said the young man exquisitely. He led the way back to the lounge.

  “We mustn’t be long,” remarked Lesley. “My sister will wonder where I am. I’m picking her up on the road.”

  The young man asked no questions, ate a scone, with a detached air, and did not attempt to offer to pay the bill, for which Lesley was particularly grateful. It would have been, she said later to Gillian, too, too awful to make use of him like that, and soak him for tea as well. She had seen Mr. Geoffrey and Mr. Joshua enter the room, and had heard them order tea. She had pointed them out to the young man, who had given one horrified glance in their direction and had exclaimed, faintly but clearly (like the horns of Elfland, thought Lesley, giggling suddenly):

  “My God! What offal!”

  Lesley saw food brought to their table, and Mr. Joshua fall to, and then she finished her tea, and she and the young man were soon in the car. She saw, to her immense satisfaction, Mr. Geoffrey come to the window, which looked on to the road, and knew that he had seen the young man get into the car beside her.

  She drove off carefully, turned at the road, which runs between the end of St. Mary’s Loch and the much smaller Loch of the Lowes, and soon was on the road for Tweedsmuir and (if they decided upon it) Biggar.

  They picked up the hungry Gillian, who walked on to the road by Cramalt Tower. The hiker had some chocolate in his pack. Gillian ate it, and they stopped the car whilst she drank a little water out of the stream. This was Meggat Water, beside which the road ran for several miles before it climbed steeply upwards at the head of the stream before dropping to Talla Linnfoots and the narrow reservoir.

  Tweedsmuir, where they set their cramped passenger down, was only
about a mile beyond the reservoir, and here they turned northwards along the Tweed to make for Biggar.

  During this part of the drive Lesley was able to explain more fully to Gillian the strategy by which she had outwitted, she hoped, the cousins.

  “I can’t think there’s much harm in Geoffrey, though,” she concluded. “He just seemed to me one of those boobs. Joshua, of course, could murder anybody. He’s just the type. I’m sure it was he who stabbed that poor boy in Newcastle.”

  “Yes,” said Gillian, “so am I. So is Aunt Adela,” she added, “but nothing can be proved.”

  “There must be proof, though. And somebody must have seen it done, that’s another thing.”

  “Yes, but you might easily see a stabbing and not know that’s what you were seeing. I mean, you might just imagine two people had collided, and yet one might have stabbed the other.”

  The road turned west for Biggar at Broughton, just beyond the railway station. It was towards evening by the time they reached the town, and as Gillian was resolute not to travel after dark they had then to decide upon the next part of their plan. Biggar itself was a very small town, and so there was no disagreement when Gillian suggested that they should go on to Lanark and put up there for the night.

  The incidents of the day were not yet over. The railway ran with the road, or very close to it, for the first few miles of the way and just outside Symington there was a level crossing. The gates were closing, and Lesley, who was driving, pulled up. Just as the car slowed, there was a roar from behind, and two motor-cyclists, tearing along as fast as their machines would move, shot by, and narrowly missed the closing gates.

  “It was them! Did you see?” cried Gillian. “Where are they off to, at that pace? We ought to get after them and see. I bet they’re up to no good. Why, they weren’t even following us up. They just rushed by as though they’d got to get somewhere as soon as ever they could.”