[Mrs Bradley 50] - Late, Late in the Evening Read online

At this critical moment the Tiger-Cat elected to become tactless. He abandoned the dodging and feinting with which he had been lulling the audience into a hope that Breezer Ben, the pride of whatever Oxfordshire village he came from, might actually win the five-pound prize, lifted him into the air, flung him down and appeared to jump on him. Ben forgot his manhood and gave a boyish squeal of agony. At this, his friends, who numbered at least half a dozen, most of them more than half-drunk, rushed the platform, knocking the fat man down.

  The rest of the audience reacted according to their various natures. Some yelled, 'Siddown!' Others stamped on the ground and whistled through their fingers. One or two made for the exit. A tall, dark woman in the front row darted up the steps on to the platform and flung herself into the fray on behalf of the Tiger-Cat, who looked (grease or no grease) as though he was going to take a dreadful bashing from Ben's infuriated friends. The seconds rushed in and what Kipling would have called 'a melee of a sumptuous kind' ensued, with the dark woman in the thick of it.

  Kenneth, still in the gangway, suddenly shrieked, 'It's Sukie! Leave her alone! Leave her alone, you beasts!' He ran towards the flight of steps. Uncle Arthur shoved me backwards, pushed past me and tore after him. A few moments later, with Kenneth tucked ignominiously under Uncle Arthur's arm and with myself in frightened but, all the same, unwilling tow, we left the now seething marquee and were just in time to see a couple of policemen approaching it. At the same moment Sukie and the Tiger-Cat crawled out from between two of the tent-pegs, spotted the policemen and snaked off into the gloom beyond the public house just as St Swithin's clock chimed the three-quarters to eleven.

  We had much to tell Aunt Kirstie when we got home, but as soon as she had given us cocoa and biscuits she took us straight over, in the midst of our excited babbling, to Aunt Lally, who said,

  'Well, I declare, Kirstie! Keeping them out till all hours and me out of my bed! Arthur ought to be ashamed of himself! Their grandfather went upstairs an hour or more ago, and what he'll say to them in the morning I don't know!'

  The fair comes only once a year and the bus before the last one didn't run, and the last was late,' said Aunt Kirstie, who never objected to telling any lies which seemed likely to improve a difficult situation. 'Besides, I kept 'em to give 'em a cup of cocoa and a biscuit to save you the trouble, so they can go straight up to bed.'

  We made no objection to this, for, what with the unprecedentedly late hour and the unusual amount of excitement, we were tired out. Kenneth, in fact, had slept on Uncle Arthur's shoulder all the way home in the bus and both of us had found the long walk home from the bus stop infinitely tedious and fatiguing.

  In the morning Kenneth said, 'Did you notice his ear was bleeding?'

  'Whose?'

  'The gypsy man, the Tiger-Cat. He's her man, you know. Her husband, or whatever it is. They don't get married properly, only over the tongs, but it's the same thing. I mean, they are allowed to have children, and all that.'

  I changed the subject back again, as being more interesting.

  'How do you know his ear was bleeding?'

  'Saw it as they passed the pub lights. He mopped it and the bit of rag was all dark. Somebody in that fight must have pulled his earring out.'

  'Did he have an earring?'

  'Yes, of course. All gypsies have them. Besides, I saw how the light caught it when that first chap chucked him off the stage. I say, it was a pretty good show, wasn't it? Wonder whether Uncle Arthur has left us anything on their bedroom table?'

  'We didn't ought to expect anything,' I said, 'not after him paying for all he did at the fair.'

  But the Sunday morning treat was there as usual, this time in the form of chocolate cream rabbits.

  'You didn't have your Saturday bath,' said Aunt Kirstie, 'and I can't give it you now with Sunday dinner to cook, and your uncle's taken the dogs out looking for Mr Ward. He never came home last night or the night before.'

  Chapter 7

  Margaret, Kenneth And Lionel

  To our disgust, on the day after the fair we were pressurised into going to Sunday school again, but when we got there we found there were great compensations. The air was full of rumour and surmise, so much so that other children, including Our Sarah and her brother Ern, who, like ourselves, were not Sunday school minded, had turned up in force to share in the gossip and speculate upon the happenings of the previous night.

  Owing to our late bedtime following our outing to the fair, it had been supposed that we would have what the aunts called 'a long lie-in' on Sunday morning, but we had been too anxious to find out what little treat, if any, was waiting for us on Aunt Kirstie's bedside table to waste time in bed. It was as we were rejoicing over the chocolate cream rabbits and digesting the information that Uncle Arthur and the whippets were out looking for Mr Ward, that the blow (as we thought it at the time) had fallen. It was Aunt Lally's doing, of course. She came over to Aunt Kirstie's to tell us to change our clothes.

  'So you'll be going to Sunday school,' said Aunt Kirstie. 'Better you'd have stayed in bed until it was too late to send you, but, one way and another, Lally's right. Today you'd best be kept out of mischief and Sunday school's one way of doing it, seems to me.'

  'But, Aunt Kirstie, we never get into mischief,' said Kenneth, who could usually wheedle her into letting him have his own way.

  'Oh, no?' said Aunt Lally. 'Let me tell you your grandpa has seen the way them bars is prised apart in that there fence at the bottom of that old garden, so best you keep clear of him for a bit unless you wants to tell him a lot of wicked lies.' She took us back with her, and off to Sunday school we were sent. In front of the building, the old drill hall, there was a broad space of gravel and on this were assembled all the children of the village and even one or two loutish youths. Few wanted to attend Sunday school. Most wanted to listen to, augment and further spread the news of what came to be known as 'the sheepwash murder'.

  We joined Our Sarah's faithful group and listened, horrified and ghoulishly excited, to her narrative. As we had come in halfway through it, Kenneth plucked up courage to say, at the first opportunity,

  'Please, Our Sarah, do begin again. We've only just come, and we've got some news, too.'

  'You 'ave, you young Oi say? Out weth et, then, else Oi ent agoen' to tell ee no then.'

  'Well, if there's been a murder, like you say, perhaps our Mr Ward did it.'

  'Mester Ward? What, that old codger what leve weth your auntie? How jer know?'

  'We don't know, but he's disappeared, so, if there's been a murder, he may be running away from the police.'

  'Well, Oi never!'

  'So please begin at the beginning and don't leave anything out.'

  'Well,' began Our Sarah, nothing loth, it seemed, to repeat her effects in front of an audience still further augmented by a couple of our cousins, Uncle George's boy and girl, 'Oi goes down to the sheepwash thes mornen a-chasen after two lettle uns as was warnted to be cleaned up for Sunday, our young Bert 'aven shet hes bretches and dodgen off not to get an 'oiden from our dad what had an 'ead on hem after the bandsmen's booze-up yesterday folleren the percession and that, when what does Oi foind?'

  'You foinds a p'liceman down the sheepwash,' replied a respectful voice from among her audience.

  'Roight ee are. Oi foinds a p'liceman. And what else does Oi foind?'

  'You foinds as the sheepwash and all about and around es railed off weth stakes and a lot of theck rope so's nobody can't get near et,' said another voice.

  'So what does Oi do?'

  'You asks the p'liceman ef he's seed your lettle neppers.'

  'Roight again. So he says no and to keep 'em away and any other cheldren, too, 'cos et's no place for cheldren and the p'lice has their orders and to hop et. So what does Oi say to that?'

  'You says, "Oo's ben murdered, then?"'

  'And what do he say?'

  'He says, "What do you know about et?"'

  'So Oi says, "You tell me and Oi'll tell y
ou." But then I sees two more on 'em comen down Loy Hell luggen a dark man atween 'em, so Oi says, "Et's them geppos, then, es et?" And what do he say to that?'

  'He says, "'Op et, 'cos your guess es as good as moine and you are obstructen me in the course of moi dooty, so sleng your 'ook and don't come yer no more."'

  'So then what does Oi do?'

  'You pokes your tongue out at hem and then you sees your lettle neppers and you cotches up weth them and you cleans up Bert weth some long grass and washes hem off in the brook and runs 'em both home and tells your dad about the murder whoile your mam feneshes up cleanen young Bert at the ketchen senk.''

  At this moment the Sunday school superintendent came out and rang a handbell and ordered us all inside the building, but Our Sarah said to her group,

  'Oi en agoen en there. Let's go down the sheepwash and see what's doen.'

  'Can't, in our Sunday clothes,' said Kenneth. 'Besides, our cousins would know and they'd split on us. I think we'd better go in.'

  'I shan't,' I said, as I noticed our cousins and several others sneaking away towards the gate. 'I'm never going in there again after what that man said to me last time. I vote we walk up to the big house and try to get a word with Lionel. He won't have heard about the murder and I want to be the first to tell him, and to tell him about Mr Ward because he's a relation.'

  'You don't really think Mr Ward is a murderer, do you?'

  'He might even be the person who got murdered. Anyway, coming with me?'

  'All right. We'd better go by way of The Marsh and up Lovers' Lane, so as not to go past Aunt Kirstie's.'

  'We can't go up Lovers' Lane if the police have roped off the sheepwash. They might arrest us.'

  'Not they. They can only send us away.'

  'We're not supposed to use Lovers' Lane, anyway, and we've done one bad thing already, not going into Sunday school.'

  'You can take a horse to Sunday school but you can't make it sing hymns,' said Kenneth.

  We giggled at this witticism and passed out at the Sunday school gate. As we reached Mother Honour's shop Kenneth looked across the road at the tumbledown cottage and said, 'I suppose Mr Ward couldn't be hiding in there? Let's go and look.'

  'Oh, come on,' I said. 'We can't go into that filthy place in our Sunday clothes.' So we crossed over at Mother Honour's, avoided the cottage and went on to The Marsh by way of the bridge and the culvert. It was, I suppose, less than half a mile to the sheepwash and long before we got there we could see several people standing about, but none of them looked like policemen.

  'Might be detectives in plain clothes,' said Kenneth.

  'One of them's Uncle Arthur,' I said, for I could see the two dogs. 'We'd better go back. We don't want questions asked about Sunday school.'

  But the dogs had spotted us. Floss was on a lead; Vicky, who could be trusted, was not. She came leaping and bounding up to us and Uncle Arthur turned round to order her back and saw us.

  'It's a fair cop,' muttered Kenneth, as he stooped to fondle Vicky. 'What shall we say?'

  As it happened, there was no need to say anything, for Uncle Arthur either had forgotten or did not realise that we ought to have been in Sunday school. Later we remembered that he had not been present when we received our marching orders.

  'You two get off home,' he said. 'No place for children, this isn't.'

  'Why isn't it?' I asked, playing the innocent. I noticed, incidentally, that the ropes and stakes which Our Sarah had mentioned were no longer in position and that the bystanders were neither policemen nor detectives, but Sunday morning idlers come to gawp at the spot marked with a cross.

  'Something happened last night to a poor young girl,' said Uncle Arthur, 'so you mind what your dad and mam tells you, and don't you ever go speaking to no strangers.'

  'We never do,' I said, forgetting for the moment that once Kenneth had spoken to Old Sukie. We fell in beside Uncle Arthur and when we reached grandfather's little wooden bridge over the brook, our uncle indicated it and told us to cut off home. This did not fit in with our plans at all, but we crossed the planks, opened the iron gate and walked a little way up the path between the currant bushes. When we snaked back to the gate and cautiously opened it, Uncle Arthur was almost up to the culvert. We watched him cross the little bridge and disappear round the corner. He had taken the road which led away from the village and, indeed, had he planned to return home, he would have accompanied us.

  'He's killing time until the pub opens at twelve,' said Kenneth, 'then he'll go in and ask the men if they've seen Mr Ward. I reckon we've got at least a couple of hours.'

  'We haven't, you know,' I said. 'Sunday school comes out at eleven to be ready for church. We'll be expected home.'

  'We can say we went for a walk.'

  'What! When Uncle Arthur thinks we went straight home when he left us?'

  'Oh, well, perhaps we'd better just hang about until Sunday school comes out, then, and look in on Aunt Kirstie just to get ourselves identified and then we can go off again. She'll be too busy with the Sunday roast to bother about what we're up to, and dinner isn't on the table until half-past one, so how about that?'

  'How will we know when Sunday school is over?'

  'We'll have to get back there and join the others as they come out.'

  'Suppose we're spotted getting there?'

  'We won't be. All we've got to do is nip past Polly's stable, get through the fence, nip through the hermit's cottage and sneak past Mrs Honour's.'

  'That's if there's nobody in the cottage. Suppose Mr Ward is in there again! And it's such a mess!'

  'Have to chance it. Come on,' said Kenneth, 'and look out for that frock of yours. We don't want questions asked about damage to Sunday clothes.'

  'Just the reason I said before. I don't want to go to that cottage,' I said. 'It's so filthy.'

  'Suit yourself. I'll go alone, then, and come back here and give you the tip when Sunday school is out.'

  But this was too much for my elder-sisterly pride.

  'Oh, come on, then,' I said crossly and, without another word, we made our way past the stable and squeezed through between the widened bars in the hermit's backyard fence.

  We stood a moment, listening, but there was not a sound in the weedy, overgrown garden, not a bird-note, not even a scurrying rat. The silence, indeed, was uncanny and I think we both felt we ought not to break it. It was an enchantment, but an uncomfortable one. I remember thinking of a ghost-story I had read where the most sinister ghosts were not confined to the hours of darkness, but stalked the earth, tall and terrible as the Host of the Sidh, at noonday at the full zenith of the sun.

  There was no wind, either, not so much as the sigh of a zephyr, and my thoughts took another although not a more comforting turn.

  'It's like Walter de la Mare,' I said softly, for my class had had an enlightened young teacher the previous term, a student from a London college, who took us once a week for poetry.

  'It's like where someone has died,' said Kenneth. 'Let's leave. The place gives me the creeps.'

  There was only one major change inside the stinking, grisly little cottage. Somebody had filled in Mr Ward's grave-like hole and stamped the earth flat over it. His pickaxe was leaning up against a filthy wall, but his spade had gone. We heard later that the police had found it at the bottom of the deepest part of the sheepwash.

  No questions were asked regarding Sunday school, but this did not surprise us much. Very little notice was ever taken of our doings so long as we did not get openly into mischief and very little interest was displayed in those things which interested us. This was not owing to negligence, but simply to the fact that, so long as we ate heartily, were what the aunts termed 'biddable' and did not appear to be sickening for anything, our welfare, both physical and spiritual, was taken for granted-a state of affairs which suited everybody, ourselves included.

  Sunday dinner-it was roast loin of pork and I was given a chop with a bit of delicious kidney in it-was over at
a quarter to three and, as usual, we were sent next door to Aunt Lally to do our Sunday reading of improving literature. As, like Aunt Kirstie and Uncle Arthur, Aunt Lally retired to her bed until Sunday tea-time, we never found much difficulty in slipping out of the house without waking grandfather, whose custom it was to put a large handkerchief over his face and sleep in his armchair until Aunt Lally woke him to give him his tea. When she reappeared she always found us piously perusing the books and pamphlets she had left with us and I will say for her that she never catechised us upon what we were supposed to have read. From her point of view, it was easier not to do so than to involve us in lies or to hear our unpalatable truths. I cannot really believe she thought we had spent the best part of two hours in reading 'How Paul's penny became a pound' or 'Little Meg's Children', let alone the tracts and other moralistic works of which she had such a collection, but she was a simple soul, so perhaps she did think we were as good as I am sure we appeared to be.

  On this particular Sunday afternoon we gave her a good quarter of an hour to get settled upstairs and for grandfather to begin his gentle snoring, then we crept down the back stairs to the scullery and left by the back door. We had no fear of encountering Uncle Arthur or Aunt Kirstie. They, too, would have retired upstairs until it was tea-time. It was most grown-ups' invariable custom on Sundays.

  As we walked up the hill to the manor house we discussed how best to get hold of Lionel and decided to try the garden first. If he was not there, the next best thing, we thought, would be to knock at the back door and enquire for him, as it would probably be answered by one of the maids, whereas the front door would be opened by the overpowering, supercilious, majestic butler.

  As it happened, we were lucky. Lionel was down by the pond chucking stones, of which he appeared to have collected a fair-sized heap from the gravel drive, into the water. He seemed pleased to see us, although he informed us that it might mean saying goodbye, as he was forbidden to go into the village.