Death at Rottingdean (30 page)

He was jolted back to the present by the unwelcome sound of voices and the noise of an approaching wagon. More day-trippers, he supposed, on an errand something like his own, and began to pack up his gear. But a moment later, as the wagon came into full view, he recognized the occupants. They were the two women he had seen yesterday on the other side of Rottingdean, with a little golden-haired girl—and the boy, who was driving the wagon.

Yes, it was the same boy, the photographer thought with irritation. The damned ubiquitous nuisance of a boy, who seemed to turn up everywhere. On the road to Black Rock, in the stable passageway after his conversation with Harry Tudwell, and even at—

The photographer frowned, thinking back through the occurrences. Was it possible? Had this boy seen him in
all
of his disguises? And was it also possible that he had been listening outside the stablemaster's office, when the photographer had been giving instructions to Harry Tudwell? Still, even if that were true, the boy was surely not quick or perceptive enough to identify—

But at that instant, the boy looked up and caught his eye, and the photographer saw the clear and sudden start of recognition flash across his face.

It was true. The boy knew him.

Few can see
Further forth
Than when the child
Meets the Cold Iron.

—RUDYARD KIPLING
Puck of Pook's Hill

 

 

 

 

 

I
t was, Kate thought as they rode along, a perfect day for a picnic, and she was very glad that she and Aunt Georgie had thought of the idea. Josie had been delighted too, when she had brought her little basket, already packed, to North End House.

“We're going on a picnic, a picnic, a picnic,” she had chanted happily, her blue eyes sparkling. She pushed her fists into the pockets of her white pinafore and looked up at Kate. “Who else is going with us, Lady Sheridan? Daddy has gone to Brighton and Mummy has a frightful cold, but can't we take Nanny and Elsie and John? They'll be lonely if they're left.”

“John is still a little young for picnics,” Kate said, putting a basket into the wagon. “Nanny is staying behind to mind him and Elsie to amuse him, so there will be only the four of us. Anyway, we'll be back by teatime.”

Aunt Georgie bustled down the path, giving instructions. “Kate, please put that basket under the seat. Patrick, I hope you haven't forgotten the rugs.” She looked around, a bit abstracted. “Where did I put my shawl? Patrick, did you remember the lemonade?” To Kate, she said, “I simply cannot believe the price of lemons these days, Kate. They are so
dear
!” Then, “Patrick! Where is my knitting? If the rest of you go running off to explore, I shall want something to amuse me.”

But at last they were off, behind a pony who seemed to know that this was a holiday jaunt, and not a bit of workaday travel. They went up the rising road, Patrick with the reins loose in his fingers, letting the pony have its head up the rutted lane through the curving chalkland, pulling them along beside a low flint wall daubed with the muted colors of moss and lichen. In the distance, flocks of sheep shone white, like constellations of stars on the flanks of the hills. Off to the left, stubble lay silver in the sun, with a few fiery poppies still blazing among the com stooks, and behind them Kate could see the Brighton race course, and the old windmill standing at arms on the top of Beacon Hill.

Then they were on the open downs, driving across the short, springy grass that was trimmed and kept so beautifully by the sheep. Kate could smell the wild thyme and marjoram crushed by the pony's hoofs, and hear the sharp
killy-killy-killy
of a kestrel and the bright tumbling notes of skylarks, and catch an occasional glimpse of chalkhill blue butterflies clustering around a late thistle. She sighed happily. The downs were clean and innocent and so beautiful that she could almost forget the sordid adventure that lay behind them in Rottingdean.

“There it is,” Patrick said after a while, pointing to a large flint barn with tiled roof. It was built on a prominence that gave it a commanding view of the downs and the sea beyond. “That's Height Barn. If you look out from the loft, you can see all the way to the valley of the River 'Ouse, and back to Brighton. On a moonlit night, you can count the ships far out in the Channel by counting their lights.”

“Is that where we're to picnic?” Kate asked.

“In Wedding Hollow, behind the barn,” Josie piped up. “There's a dew-pond there, and fairies. It's my favorite place in all the world.”

“It looks like someone else is enjoying the area too,” Aunt Georgie said with interest. “Look. There's a man taking pictures, there by the stone wall.”

“It's a beautiful vantage point,” Kate said. “Perhaps I'll ask Charles to bring one of his cameras and shoot it. The photographs would be a perfect souvenir to take home with us.” She put her hand on Patrick's shoulder. “Perhaps you'll come with us, Patrick, and show us the best place from which to shoot.”

But Patrick didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the man with the camera, who stood on the hill beside the grassy lane. Then he seemed to shake himself, and turned. “That's the best place,” he said. “Where that man is.”

“But we don't want to go to the barn,” Josie insisted. “Drive us to the Hollow, Patrick. I want to look for fairies!” She sobered. “But we must be careful when we look for fairies, my father says, for the fairies might be looking for us, although they don't like to be called fairies but People of the Hills, who can do real magic, not just wave silly little wands around in the air. And they might carry us off.”

There might well be fairies, Kate thought as she climbed out of the wagon in Wedding Hollow and gazed around, for the place had the look of enchantment. There was a small, clear pond, surrounded by a thicket of gorse and blackberry and wild roses. Patrick, who seemed subdued, took Josie off to explore. Aunt Georgie and Kate spread the rugs and put out sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs and potted meats and little cakes, and after a while the children came back and they all sat down and ate. Afterward, Patrick packed the food into the baskets and Aunt Georgie settled down with Josie in the curve of her arm to read one of the stories from
The Jungle
Books. Kate lay down in the dry grass and meadowsweet beside them, the sun warm on her face, listening drowsily until she fell asleep.

It was nearly an hour later when she awakened. The sun had disappeared behind a bank of gray clouds and a wind was stirring in the tops of the beech trees. Aunt Georgie and Josie sat up, too, rubbing their eyes.

“My goodness,” Aunt Georgie exclaimed, “I believe I've been asleep.”

“I'm cold,” Josie said, rubbing her arms. “Where's the sun?”

“It's gone under a cloud,” Aunt Georgie said. “The glass was falling this morning, so perhaps we will have a bit of rain.” She got to her feet and shook the dry grass out of her skirts. “Kate, why don't you find Patrick, and we'll start home.”

“Of course,” Kate said, and went off to look in the beech grove, and then in the blackberry thicket, and finally at the empty barn on the hill, shouting the boy's name all the white. But there was no answer to Kate's calls, nor to Aunt Georgie's peremptory summons, nor to Josie's piping wails. After an hour's searching and shouting, they had to acknowledge the truth.

Patrick had disappeared, and Josie could not be persuaded that the People of the Hills had not carried him off.

All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
(1860)

 

 

 

 

 

A
fter Charles's interview with Harry Tudwell, he and Kipling drove into Brighton to talk to the chief constable. On the way, Charles stopped at Black Rock and, leaving Kipling to wait in the motorcar, went into the cottage for a brief talk with the widow Radford. She was waiting with all her belongings piled about her for her brother to come and take her and the children to Brighton, where they planned to bury her husband. She did not weep. Worse, she regarded Charles with a long, bitter look and replied to his questions with a torrent of scathing words, as hot and fierce as a fountain of molten rock.

Feeling depressed and hollow, Charles climbed back into the Panhard. Kipling looked at him searchingly, as if to ask him how the conversation had gone, then thought better of it and, pulling his motoring goggles over his eyes, sat back in the seat.

They drove for a while in silence. It was a pretty day, but a low band of gray clouds to the south, over the Channel, presaged a change in weather. At Kemp Town, they met the Rottingdean omnibus on its return trip from Brighton, and pulled over to the grassy verge to keep from spooking the horses. Charles stopped the car.

In the sudden silence, Kipling said, “You're thinking that you've solved Radford's murder, then?”

Charles pulled up his goggles and rubbed his eyes. Goggles or no, the fine grit from the roads seemed to filter through every crevice. “Judging from the evidence in Smith's cottage and from what Mrs. Radford told me just now, it seems pretty clear that Captain Smith killed him. Radford apparently let Smith know that he planned to inform the officials about the smuggling operation at Rottingdean. Mrs. Radford claims that he wanted to persuade Smith to abandon his evil ways.” Charles sighed. “He might just as easily have wanted to blackmail Smith for a share of the ill-gotten gains. I don't suppose we'll ever know which it was.”

“Give him the benefit of the doubt,” Kipling said.

“Yes, I suppose,” Charles replied. “However it was, we have the weapon—Radford's knife, which Kate found among the cutlery in Smith's cottage. Smith must have run him through back to front, and then hauled him out for burial in the Channel.”

Kipling nodded. “So, Radford was killed by Smith. But who killed Smith?”

“Someone with access to the guns we found in the tunnel last night,” Charles said. “I am willing to wager, however, that it was neither Trunky Thomas nor Harry Tudwell. I've spoken to both, and while they have plenty to hide, I don't think they're concealing murder.”

Kipling looked grim. “Plenty to hide, indeed. To my way of thinking, those guns and explosives are tantamount to murder, all by themselves. In the hands of anarchists—” He shook his head angrily. “And to think that Rottingdean has gotten itself involved with gunrunning! It's a bloody disgrace, that's what it is! The village will never recover from the dishonor.”

Charles gave him a questioning look. “So you're convinced that's what's going on?”

“What else can it be?” Kipling demanded. “You said yourself that the bit of smuggling they've done or are likely to do scarcely warrants the cost of those underground works. And in today's market, smuggling makes no economic sense—not on a large scale, in any event.”

“I've got to agree with you there,” Charles said. “And the guns are critical—there's no getting around that. But still—” He frowned.

“Still what?” Kipling asked. “You're thinking there's something else?”

“It's the map overlaps,” Charles said. “They don't fit a smuggling venture—nor a gunrunning operation, either. That's the one piece of the puzzle that makes no sense to me at all.”

“Well,” Kipling said darkly, “all I can say is that we had better find a way to keep this out of the papers. Life in Rottingdean won't be worth a shilling if the story gets out. The village will sink under the shame of it.”

“I agree to that, too,” Charles said. The omnibus safely past, he drove back onto the road and they finished the journey into Brighton in silence, stopping for lunch at an inn on the east side of the town.

Their visit took longer than expected because Sir Robert had been called out to a robbery at the home of a prominent citizen, and they had to wait over an hour for his return. While they waited, Kipling read the
Times
and Charles reviewed the notes he had scribbled in his notebook over the past two days, making sure he had all the details straight in his mind. It was those map overlays that puzzled him so, as he had told Kipling, and the telegraph equipment. Everything else, he could fit comfortably into one or another scenario. But those two pieces were out of place, unless—

Kipling rattled the newspaper furiously. “Another blasted German warship commissioned at Kiel!” he exclaimed, “and according to the
Times,
the Germans are looking to the Philippine Islands for new coaling stations to serve their fleet.” He shook his head darkly. “Mark my words, Sheridan. This is serious business. We'll find ourselves at war with them one of these days—no matter that the Kaiser is the grandson of the Queen.”

But Charles was scarcely listening. He sat very still, beginning to get a glimmering of a possibility—a fantastic-seeming possibility, a very faint glimmer, a will-o'-the-wisp luring him down a dark road, overhung with truly frightening shadows. Like a riddle, with another riddle as its key. But however fantastic this explanation might seem, there was surely something to it. He studied his notes once again, seeing no flaw in his hypothesis and shivering as he thought about the eventuality. Well, tonight's venture, however it turned out, would surely yield more information. It
had
to. If his theory was correct, the stakes were unimaginably high, and the game was much larger than anyone had thought.

Upon his return, Sir Robert was appropriately apologetic for the delay. They began their conference by going over all of the points Charles had been arranging in his mind, one by one, from the murders of George Radford and Captain Smith to the smuggling operation that was planned for that night.