The House Above the River (12 page)

“Better, tomorrow morning,” Giles corrected. “If we're going on east to Lézardrieux we need to take the latter part of the ebb out of here, so that by the time we're clear of the rocks at Les Heaux it'll have turned and be in our favour again along the coast and into the next river. I haven't done my sums yet, but that's the general idea.”

“We'll be starting between five and six tomorrow morning, then?” Tony asked.

“Something like that. Unless you want to try the inside channel, the mainland side of Les Heaux.”

“No, we don't,” said Phillipa, emphatically. “We want to avoid all possible hazards from now on.”

“You can't do it on this coast,” Giles reminded her.

After tea he took Susan for a row in the dinghy. They drifted down the river on the tide without much effort, and landed on the other side of the water, at the hard below Pen Paluch. They pulled the dinghy up the beach, fastened the painter to a ring in the little harbour wall, and walked up the hill.

The village here lay more steeply than Penguerrec. The houses were terraced and the narrow road climbed up and round and back again. There seemed to be only one shop in the place, but they had not come to buy stores, only to explore and be together.

They walked on through the village and found a country road. It had a good surface and tall hedges. Too tall, Giles complained, to see where they were. When they came to a gate, he climbed it and stood precariously on top, balancing himself with the help of a small tree in the hedge.

“Plougrescant church is dead ahead,” he reported. “We might go and look at it.”

Susan laughed.

“It's about six miles from here by road,” she said. “You can't go direct anywhere. All fields and winding lanes. Just like Devon.”

“Right. Then we'll find a nice secluded field and enjoy the sun.”

There were flies in the field, and the sun was very hot, far hotter than on the boat in the river. But Susan and Giles were much too engrossed with one another to notice these discomforts. Later, when the sun had left their corner of the field, sinking down now to the west, they went back to the harbour hand in hand, and rowed slowly up to
Shuna
, unhindered by the tide, which was nearly at slack water.

Susan wanted to go straight back to the house, because she had been away so long, but the others persuaded her to have dinner on board. Afterwards Giles took her to the landing-stage and walked with her up the path through the woods.

At the edge of the lawn he stopped.

“I won't come to the house,” he said. “I've written this final note to Miriam, simply thanking her from the three of us for her hospitality. Will you give it to her, and a similar message to Henry?”

She promised to do this.

“Write to me at Peter Port,” Giles said. “We ought to be there in three or four days from now. And take care of yourself.”

He kissed her and went away, and Susan watched him until he was out of sight. Then she went into the house.

They turned in early on
Shuna
, because they had to be up at dawn the next day. Giles lay awake for a long time, listening to the quiet breathing of his sleeping crew, and the gentle slapping of the river against the sides of the yacht. Susan was his girl, he decided, and he meant to marry her. This affair was not make-belief, like all the other encounters with which he had tried to solace himself since Miriam broke out of his life so cruelly. And so disastrously, it seemed, to her own happiness. He lay awake, knowing that he would marry Susan, and wondering what his life would have been like if he had married Miriam. She and Henry had no children. Perhaps that was partly the cause of her present pitiable state. But it might be her own fault, not her misfortune, and not Henry's selfishness. In that case he could be thankful she had let him down. And again his thoughts went round to her strange insistence upon danger and death, her obsession with fear, her wild attempts to renew her power over him. Without Susan's presence and all that it had come to mean for him in these few days, he knew he would have been lost. Even now, he realised with dismay, he was thinking more of Miriam than of his new young love. At last he fell asleep, adding his own quiet breathing to that of his sleeping friends.

The tide came in, filling the creek, rising up the river banks. The landing-stage rode level under the full moon. Not a breath of wind stirred the rigging. And at the turn of the tide, about three in the morning,
Shuna
began to move. Her bows swung gently round, as they always did, to face upstream to meet the current beginning to flow towards the sea. But she did not only turn, she began almost at once to slide down the river. Faster and faster she moved, swinging sideways now, borne along by the rush of the ebb, towards the sea and the jagged rocks round which the eddies surged and swept.

A fishing boat had come into the river that night, bound for Tréguier. She did not belong to either of the villages at the mouth of the river, and had no moorings of her own in their harbours. She had not picked up any of the empty moorings, but had dropped her anchor in the stream just clear of the other boats, trusting to the late hour to save her from any trouble with other shipping.

Shuna
was swept broadside on into the bows of this vessel, with a crash that woke everyone on board.

Giles was on deck in a matter of seconds. At first he thought the fishing boat had run into him, in spite of the full moon and the riding light he always hung from his forestay. But he realised almost at once that the fishing boat was fast at her anchor and
Shuna
was the truant.

The crew of the fishing vessel had gone ashore to spend the night with friends. There was no one aboard. Giles and Tony made
Shuna
fast to her, and as the first grey fight began to drown the shadows of the moon, they inspected the damage. A considerable amount of paint had gone, the gunwale was badly dented in several places. Two of the stanchions to which the life-lines were fastened had carried away, but otherwise, above the waterline
Shuna
had come off fairly well.

“We were lucky to hit a boat,” said Tony, “and not a fixed target like a rock.”

“A rock would probably have holed us,” answered Giles.

He looked dazed and bewildered.

“I can't think how it happened,” he kept repeating. “We held in the gale, so why not tonight, with no wind at all?”

“Springs,” said Tony. “We must have pulled up our anchor.”

“But I let down an extra five fathoms this morning—I mean yesterday morning—on purpose,” said Giles. “Give me the torch!” he added, quickly.

Going forward he stooped over the chain, and swore fiercely.

“Come here, Tony!” he shouted.

Tony went quickly up to the bows.

“Look at the figures on the chain,” Giles said. “Lucky I painted them all on fresh this season. The fathoms are in red.”

“Someone has taken in the chain.”

“Someone who knew exactly how far to take it in to guarantee we'd drag at the top of the flood. This was another deliberate trap, and we know who it was intended for, this time.”

“And therefore all the other times,” said Phillipa, who had joined them.

“Very likely,” Tony agreed. “Only we'll never prove that. I doubt if we'll ever prove anything. We've only your word for letting out extra chain, Giles. Good enough for us, but not for the natives over here.”

“Susan saw me putting it down. I showed her.”

“Fair enough. But that wouldn't make any difference to the
gendarmerie
.”

“Possibly not. No point in arguing it. We'd better get the anchor in now. God knows where it is, or the chain either.”

They soon discovered this. Their chain was firmly wrapped about that of the boat to which they were tied. They dared not pull it free without danger of casting both boats adrift.

“Have to wait for the owners,” said Giles. “Better get dressed and see what we can do about those stanchions.”

They did not have to wait long. About half-past four a heavy dinghy with an outboard motor put off from the hard and four men came on board the fishing boat.

Recriminations were followed by a long explanation from Giles, patently not believed.

“But don't you understand?” he shouted at last, “if I'd made a mistake over the chain when we came here, and if I hadn't put down more yesterday morning, we'd have floated off yesterday, when we were all at the creek bathing, or rather when we were having lunch at the château. It didn't happen then, so the chain must have been altered some time after that, when the tide had gone down a bit.”

Reluctantly the fishermen agreed that this was probably what had happened. They hastened to add that they did not belong to Penguerrec themselves. Giles saw the point of this, and ignored it.

“How do you propose we disentangle the chain?” he asked.

The skipper of the fishing boat had a simple remedy.

“I pull up my chain and when we come to yours, we cut a link, and we are both free.”

“And my anchor at the bottom of the river,” said Giles. “No, thank you.”

He explained his own scheme. They would pull in their respective chains until the tangle appeared and then, from the big dinghy, they could secure his anchor, and sort out the trouble.

“And if we are off the bottom by then?” asked the fisherman.

“We'll have our engines on, which will keep us under control,” Giles answered.

After some further argument this scheme was adopted. Giles retrieved his anchor, but they found it necessary to cut his chain in order to free it. Several links had been damaged.

“It is a pity,” said the fisherman, politely, “but there was no other way. You will have to have it repaired. And in the mean-time …” He shrugged, looked at his crew, and added, with a grin, “You had better get out to sea quickly.”

Giles grinned back.

“Not before I find out who did the dirty on me,” he said.

The other's face hardened.

“That would be a mistake,” he said, briefly.

“Why so?”

The man's face went blank.

“Do you start now, at once?” he asked. “I have to go to Tréguier.”

“If you can give me ten minutes to rig a line on my anchor, I'll move further in-shore.”

The skipper agreed, and even proved helpful to the extent of telling Giles exactly where he could lie to avoid the mooring chains of the other boats and also avoid drying out.

Working fast, Giles and Tony got out the rope they used for the kedge anchor, and reinforced it with another line. Presently they moved away from the fishing boat, and dropped the anchor again.

“It ought to hold in this weather,” Giles said. “And it isn't for long.”

“Why can't we go now?” Phillipa asked.

“For two reasons. One, that we'll have to go west now to Morlaix, to get the chain fixed, which means we want to use the whole of the ebb, which goes westerly along the coast. Two, that I'm going ashore to have it out with Henry.”

He went below, without waiting for an answer, and neither of the Marshalls made any further protest.

Giles's anger festered throughout breakfast, a silent and uncomfortable meal. Then, alone, he set out for the hard.

“You look after
Shuna.
” he said to Tony, as he pushed away from her. “I'll look after Henry.”

But when he reached the château he found that this was impossible. For Henry Davenport had disappeared.

He stood on the doorstep, an incredulous frown on his face.

“
Disappeared
?” he repeated. “Gone out, don't you mean?”

“No, monsieur,” Francine answered, coming across the hall to the open door. “Naturally, if he is not in the house, he has gone out of it. But not as you are thinking, for a walk, or even a visit. He has disappeared. We do not know where he is.”

The girl who had opened the door gave Francine a frightened look, and hurried away.

“He didn't tell anyone he was going? Not even madame?”

“Not even
me
” said Francine, drawing herself up, her heavy figure presenting the maximum of outraged dignity. “This has never happened before. It is that which makes me afraid.”

Her voice broke as she said these words, and looking at her closely, Giles saw that her eyes were red from crying.

“Then perhaps I may speak to Madame,” he said, quietly.

“She is in her room,” Francine answered. “Mademoiselle Susan is with her. They will not be expecting you. We understood that you intended to leave very early this morning.”

“So I did,” said Giles, grimly. “And the reason why I'm not half-way to Lézardrieux now needs an explanation—very urgently. I came to get it from Monsieur Henri.”

“That is clearly impossible.”

There was no answer to this. Giles went towards the foot of the stairs. When he began to go up them, Francine, who had been standing, rigid and silent, near the door, suddenly came to life again and hurried after him.

“I do not know if you can see Madame,” she said, in a low agitated voice. “She is beside herself. She imagines things.”

He paused, looking back at her.

“Such as?”

“It is ridiculous—absurd. She imagines he has hidden himself in order to frighten her.”

“You think that is ridiculous?”

Francine shrugged.

“What else? It is not the conclusion of a sane person.”

“What do you consider a sensible conclusion?”

Tears came into her eyes, and began to roll down her cheeks.

“I am afraid for
him
, monsieur.”

Giles turned and went on, and Francine followed. He waited while she went into Miriam's room, wondering a good deal about her present anxiety on Henry's account. Before, Miriam had always seemed to be her chief concern.