Mystery Mile (12 page)

They were filing out of the maze as he spoke, and they turned towards the house.

‘Of course,' said Marlowe, ‘the staff's hunting round the place now. We may hear something any minute.'

It was only then that the others realized the strain under which he was labouring. ‘Something's bound to turn up,' said Mr Campion reassuringly. But his pale face was expressionless and there was a trace of alarm in his eyes.

They found the house in considerable commotion. Biddy came running out to meet them. After they had reported their discoveries to her, and she had satisfied herself that no more could be done at the moment, she turned to them.

‘I've shoved some cold food on the table. You'd better eat it. I'm trying to make Isopel eat, too. Perhaps if you all sit down you'll be able to think of something. Nothing's even logical at present.'

As they went into the dining-room they were startled to see the smiling Mr Barber rise out of the window-seat.

‘Oh!' said Biddy, surprised into frankness. ‘I'd forgotten all about you. I'm so sorry.'

‘Not at all.' Mr Barber spoke complacently. ‘I will wait until Mr Lobbett can see me. You see,' he went on confidentially, ‘I have here something that I think will interest him.' He tapped the leather case significantly. ‘The works of Cotman are only now beginning to be fully appreciated. But since their worth has become known the samples of this genius have naturally become rare. I think I may say that the discovery of a hitherto unknown painting of his Greta period is an event, the
importance of which can hardly be overestimated. Now' – with a magnificent gesture he proceeded to unlock the silver catches – ‘you shall judge for yourselves.'

The expressions of bewilderment which had appeared upon the faces of his audience gave place to those of incredulity as they realized that his mind was on some picture or other that he had come down with the intention of selling.

Marlowe stepped up to him. ‘You'll forgive us,' he said. ‘I thought you understood. My father has mysteriously –' He jibbed at the word ‘disappeared'. ‘I mean we can't find him.'

Mr Barber smiled and spread out his hands. ‘It does not matter,' he said. ‘I will wait.'

Marlowe lost his patience. ‘Don't you understand?' he said. ‘We don't know where he is.'

Mr Barber's reproachful smile did not vanish. ‘I have come down to value the other picture,' he said. ‘There will be no compulsion to buy my Cotman. I think I will wait, having come so far.'

His cheerful non-acceptance of the facts was too much for them. Giles repressed a violent desire to shout at him. Marlowe turned away helplessly. ‘Oh, wait then,' he said, and quite obviously dismissed the man from his mind.

Mr Barber bowed and sat down again, nursing his precious case.

Addlepate's single sharp imperative bark, demanding entrance, startled them all. ‘Curse him!' said Giles, getting up out of force of habit to open the door. No one looked at the little dog as he came padding in. They were eating mechanically, almost in silence, waiting for the coherent frame of mind which Biddy had foretold.

‘Oh, down, darling, down!' Biddy spoke irritably as the only creature in the room faintly interested in food pawed her arm.

‘Ah,' said Mr Barber conversationally. ‘The dog. The animal sacred to the English.'

No one took any notice of the opening, but Giles glanced moodily at the little mongrel, vaguely seeking inspiration there.

His reward was sudden and startling. Folded through the
ring of the dog's collar, and indubitably placed there by human hand, was a small twist of paper.

Before he could speak, Campion had seen it also. He called the dog over to him. They watched him fascinated as he unwound the strip of paper and spread it out upon the tablecloth.

They left their seats and crowded round him, leaning over his shoulder. It was a page torn from a notebook, and the few words were scrawled as if the sender had written under great difficulty. Marlowe read out the message in a shaking voice:

‘Am safe if blue suitcase is not lost.'

‘I don't quite get this last bit,' said Marlowe. ‘The paper's got crumpled. Oh, wait a bit – yes, I see it now.'

‘Keep the police out of this. Safer without.'

They exchanged frightened glances.

‘Is it your father's writing?' It was Giles who spoke.

‘Yes, that's his hand all right. The leaf's torn from his notebook, too, I think.' Marlowe raised his eyes and looked round at them, bewilderment and incredulity mingling on his face. ‘Not a sign of anyone on the roads, not a trace of a stranger in the place, and then out of the air – this,' he said huskily. ‘What do you make of it? I feel I've gone mad.'

IT WAS VERY
nearly dawn before the last of the yellowing hurricane lanterns which had been bobbing over the saltings and in every nook and cranny of Mystery Mile took the path across the park and came to a stop outside the big kitchen door at the back of the hall. There were ten of them, carried by the entire male population of the village, with the exception of two old men who were bedridden and a few small boys.

They were an untidy red-faced crowd, considerably wearied by their night of search, but intensely interested in the proceedings.

The distinction between the two main families, the Willsmores and the Brooms, was sharply defined: the Willsmores, lank dark people with quick beady eyes and a knowing expression; the Brooms, sturdier, more stolid, with large red bovine faces, and every variety of fair hair from red to yellow.

Cuddy, who had come over from the Dower House to help Mrs Whybrow, the Manor housekeeper, bustled about preparing tea or mulled beer for each newcomer.

The outer kitchen where they were assembling was one of those great stone outbuildings without which no East Anglian house is complete. It was tacked on to the rest of the Manor and was stone-floored with a great brick fireplace whose chimney was built out into the room. The trestle tables had been pushed back against the whitewashed walls, and forms and settles dragged round the roaring fire.

Mrs Whybrow was a housewife of the old school, and black hams of her own curing hung from the centre beam, high above their heads. The beer barrel was in the room, and the great kettles of boiling water steamed on the wide hearthstone.

The housekeeper and Cuddy were sisters; both old women had entered the service of the Paget family when they were girls, and they considered themselves quite as much a part of it as any of the household. As they hurried round now, doling out the great white mugs of beer and hunks of home-made bread and yellow cheese, they looked marvellously alike with their greying hair and their stiff aprons crackling as they moved.

George and 'Anry were well to the fore, as became George's dignity. They sat side by side. 'Anry was the younger by a year or so. He was considerably less proud of himself than his brother, and was afflicted with a certain moroseness which, coupled with his natural inarticulate tongue, made him something of a man of mystery in the village. He was a simple old fellow with a goatee instead of a fringe, which he eschewed out of deference to George, mild brown eyes, and, when he permitted it, a slow and rather foolish smile.

Mr Kettle, the postmaster, who had come in after the others with a great show of exhaustion, sat some little distance away from the crowd. He drank his beer from a glass, a circumstance which seemed to make the beverage more genteel to his way of thinking. He also wore a bowler hat, and had wrapped himself up in an immense grey-and-white striped scarf.

‘'E looks like an owd badger,' remarked George in an undertone to 'Anry. The observation was quite loud enough to reach Mr Kettle, but he remained magnificently aloof and offered no retaliation.

One of the Broom boys, a great sandy-haired lout with the beginnings of a beard scattered over his chin like golden dust, repeated the jest, and the party tittered hysterically while George preened himself. Wit, he considered, was one of his strongest points.

‘If yow'd a' found summat o' the foreigner instead o' 'tending yow was barmy, yow'd ha' summat more to tell Mr Giles when he come in,' said Cuddy sharply, forsaking her company accent for her native sing-song. ‘I heard him and Mr Marlowe comin' in a minute ago.'

A gloom fell over the party as they recollected the matter on hand.

‘I had I owd dog on ut,' remarked one of the Brooms, a great hulking cross-eyed fellow with a red moustache. ‘'E didn't find nobbut. 'E kept leadin' I back to I own house.'

‘Owd dog go by smell,' said George contemptuously, and once again there was laughter.

Cuddy banged a china mug down upon the table, her kindly old face paling with anger. ‘I'm ashamed o' the whole lot on yow,' she said, her voice rising. ‘Don't none of yow realize that the foreign gentleman's lost? An' yow set here guzzling and laughing yow'sel's sillier'n yow was before.'

‘'E ain't a foreigner,' said George. ‘'E talks same as I do.'

‘Anyone as don't be born 'ere is a foreigner, ain't they?' said the man with the red moustache, squinting viciously at Mr Kettle.

‘T'other gentleman wot come s'afternoon was a proper foreigner,' said 'Anry, speaking entirely without the aid of George. ‘'E couldn't 'ardly understand what I said to un. 'E got riled with I. I couldn't 'elp laughin'.'

‘Yow'll 'elp ut this minute,' said Cuddy quickly. ‘Here come the house folk.' Her sharp ears had caught the sound of Giles's voice in the passage, and the talk died down immediately, so that there was perfect silence in the kitchen when the wooden latch clicked, and Giles, followed by Marlowe, came into the room.

They too had been out on the saltings all night. The two young men looked pale and worried as they pushed their way into the group.

‘Anything to report?' Giles's voice slipped down a tone or two and there was the suspicion of a country accent in some of the words he used. ‘Now,' he went on, ‘anyone who's seen anything unusual about the place, speak up right away. Let's hear about it.'

There was silence in the room. The group shifted uneasily and glanced uneasily at one another.

‘Us ain't seen nothin',' said George. ‘It do be a wonder.' He
spoke with a certain amount of satisfaction. Giles was nettled.

‘It's no wonder you couldn't find him, George,' he said. ‘He can't have disappeared into thin air, though. There must be some trace of him about the place.'

‘I could find 'im if annybody could,' said George. ‘I be a wunnerful smart old man. But neither me nor 'Anry, we didn't see nothin'.'

‘I'm afraid the man's right, sir.' Mr Kettle's unpleasant voice was raised from his corner. ‘I myself 'ave been over all the principal means of exit from the estate and there is no trace as far as I can see. As you know, sir, we are practically an island, only more cut off, if I may say so, on account of the mud at low tide. You can depend upon it that we have done our best. Ever since I left my little shop, sir, at eight o'clock, I have walked –'

‘Yes, yes, I know. That was very good of you,' said Giles brusquely. He disliked Mr Kettle quite as much as any of the village. ‘But the question I'm trying to get at is, have there been any strangers seen on the estate since yesterday morning?'

There was silence again in the big kitchen, and then 'Anry suddenly became violently agitated. He grew very red, and struggled for his words.

‘Master Giles – I seen un. In a car wi' great red wheels. 'E stopped I and 'e said to I, “Where's the big 'ouse?” and I said to 'e, suspicious-like, “What do yow want ut for?” and – and –'

‘Oh, you're talking about Mr Barber,' said Giles. ‘We know about him, 'Anry. He's in the next room now.'

George nudged his brother self-righteously. ‘You be a fool, 'Anry,' he said, wagging his head complacently. 'Anry cast his eyes down and looked supremely uncomfortable.

‘How about boats?' said Giles. ‘Did anybody see a row-boat or any other kind round here between six and seven yesterday evening?'

‘No, sir.' It was George who spoke, and the others agreed with him. ‘We was nearly all on us t'home, you see, sir,' explained one of the Willsmores. ‘We was gettin' our tea 'bout that time.'

‘You was out, George,' said 'Anry.

George nodded. ‘I were. I were down by owd mist tunnel, Master Giles, right lookin' on the water, as you might say. And I didn't see nothin', like I would ‘a' done 'ad there been a boat there. Come to think,' he went on reflectively, ‘I come right round from t'lower meadows, so if there'd been a boat apullin' away from the shore I couldn't 'elp but see ut. No, sir,' he finished, ‘I doubt there wasn't no boat left 'ere last night.'

‘Half a minute,' said Marlowe. ‘What's the mist tunnel?'

George answered. ‘That be a pocket, as you might say, sir. A bit of a dip, like, in the salting. The mist do lie there. Summer and winter, 'tis always the same. It be a wunnerful place for snares. It used to be, I mean,' he corrected himself as he caught Giles's eye upon him.

‘And you were down there, you say?' said Marlowe, ‘and you didn't see a soul?'

‘Nothin',' said George. ‘Nothin' anywheres.'

He passed his mug to Cuddy without a word. She took it from him and set it in the big stone sink which ran all along one side of the room.

The old man left his seat and walked gingerly over the stones towards her. ‘That warn't for washin',' he said. ‘I've been tellin' of Master Giles, and tellin' of makes I thirsty.'

Marlowe turned to Giles. ‘It's no good,' he said. ‘They don't know anything. We'd better get back to the others. Those girls ought to get some sleep if possible.'