The House Above the River (23 page)

Susan was thrilled, and said so.

“I know,” Giles answered her. “There's nothing to compare with making a home landfall at dawn. Except picking up foreign lights in the middle of the night.”

The others came into the cockpit to have a look at England and then Phillipa went below again to get breakfast. Susan was entrusted with the tiller for the first time, while Giles and Tony set the spinnaker to increase their speed.

“It steadies the roll, too,” Giles explained to Susan. But she laughed. She had her sea legs by now, and when the bacon and eggs came up from below, she ate heartily. The others congratulated her.

“It seems simply ages since we left Penguerrec,” she said. “Weeks. Months. Not only yesterday.”

“The day before yesterday,” Giles corrected her.

“Yes. Of course. I've lost count.”

“One does,” agreed Phillipa.

“I don't want to talk about it if you'd rather not,” Susan went on, looking at Giles. “But I keep going over it all in my mind. That last day, I mean. And wondering what really happened.”

“I know,” he answered, in a low voice. “So do I.”

“Why did the ladder fall?”

“Because it had not been mended, and my rope had been taken off and whoever did that dug out the feet of the ladder as well, to loosen the whole contraption.”

“Could it have been Henry?”

“Not only could, but was. I found his boots in the cupboard in the hall, wet, with river mud all over them.”

“But I thought the police had hold of him from the time he landed,” Phillipa said, coming up the companion-way with the coffee pot in her hand. “Do you two want to stay out here or go below?”

The early sun, breaking out of the mist, touched Susan's hair, making the gold shine as it had in the Tréguier river.

“Here,” said Giles.

“It's a pretty grim thought,” said Tony, “that Henry was in the house, somewhere, without Miriam knowing. Francine must have seen him, even if the maids didn't. Someone would have to let him in.”

“Why not Henry, himself?”

“Yes. I suppose he had his own keys. Anyway, the inspector must have been with him.”

“I don't think they'd tell Francine,” Susan argued. “She always seemed to be on Miriam's side.”

“In a way,” said Phillipa, thoughtfully. “She tackled me once about Miriam and Giles. I know, I didn't tell you at the time, Giles. It was so embarrassing. She said Miriam had kept your photograph. Actually she showed me a photograph of you both; one of those double frames. Later on, she told me Miriam had other photographs of men friends. I couldn't stop her, though she must have seen I didn't want to hear gossip. I think Francine knew everything that went on. I'm sure she'd know Henry had come back.”

“Of course she would,” said Giles. “But she didn't know more about Miriam than Henry himself did. He knew all about those scandals. He told me so in Southampton.”

“The grocer's wife hinted at them, too. It must have been common knowledge.”

“Do you mean,” Susan asked, “that Francine was not a hundred per cent for Miriam? That she was deliberately blackening her character?”

“It looks a bit like it, now, don't you think?”

“Probably she was just trying to build up a very good case for getting Miriam to leave Henry, before he took really drastic action,” Tony suggested.

“Miriam would never have gone,” said Susan. “She was enjoying it all. She loved the feel of being martyred. I know she did.”

“She'd have gone if I'd taken her,” said Giles, giving voice to the thought in all their minds. “But Susan put a stopper on that, thank God.”

He stretched out a hand to her knee, and she covered it with her own, while their eyes met, and stayed.

“I don't see why it shouldn't have been those fishermen in the village,” Tony began again. “Responsible for all the odd things that happened, I mean. The hole into the tunnel and the notice board moved, and the broken ladder. I think as soon as it got about, via the maids and Francine, that the English visitors knew Madame, they foresaw another possible scandal, an outsize one at that, and set about driving us away, with their old Resistance techniques. Us. Not Miriam.”

“I wonder.”

“It fits all right. We had this out before. We were the strangers who wouldn't know where the secret tunnel was, or the quicksands. And who used the landing-stage. Besides, there was
Shuna
's accident. You can't argue that was meant for Miriam by Henry or for Henry by Miriam. Incidentally we seem to have forgotten she tried to murder him.”

“I haven't forgotten,” said Giles.

“Nor I,” said Susan, with a shiver.

“Well then. Look at it from the Penguerrec people's point of view. Their action against the yacht was successful. We left at once. But after a few days we came back, though we anchored at the harbour. They were not to know we meant to stay there, and not use the landing-stage. Perhaps Henry gave orders, after all, before he left, for the ladder to be mended. I think it's more likely he forgot, because he left himself that evening, didn't he?”

“So the village men arranged to wreck the ladder even more thoroughly than before?”

“No. I think it was a genuine accident the first time. Henry couldn't have put on the act he did, if he'd expected it. He'd have shown excessive concern to cover his guilt, not excessive reserve and every symptom of thinking it was meant for him.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Phillipa. “If the new idea of Henry being a murderer is to hold water, you'll have to credit him with being a marvellous actor. Personally I can't believe it.”

Giles had been considering Tony's theory.

“I'm sorry, old boy,” he said, presently. “But your idea won't work. The Penguerrec types couldn't have laid that trap for us, during the night Henry came back.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, I was awake, on and off, most of it. I heard
Marie Antoine
's engines start up, and the men calling to one another. That's why I went on deck. And I'm certain no boat went up the river to the stage. I'd have heard it, and gone up to see.”

“You said you found steps in the bank. Doesn't that mean the job was done from the landward end?”

“With the gendarmerie as keen as they were on the job? I very much doubt it. Anyway, the point is it couldn't have happened in the night?”

“Why not?”

“The tide, fathead. Those steps in the bank, when I saw them, were fresh cut. At low water, of course. A couple of hours before. When the inspector's little game was on. When the police check in the grounds had been called off. When I was in the creek, fishing, and you two were having your siesta, or anyway, not looking up the river towards the stage. When the job could have been done by land. If the steps had been made at the previous low water, in the night, they'd have been blotted out, or partly so, at any rate.”

“I'm a clot,” said Tony. “Wash that out.”

“The trap was laid at midday, or just after,” Giles went on. “It must have been. I don't know where Henry spent the rest of the night, after he landed, but I think it must have been at the house. Renaud didn't want anyone in the village to see him, to avoid the possibility of them telling Miriam.”

“But if he was at the house, as we said before, someone there must have known, even if only Francine. And I thought we decided she was on Miriam's side.”

“You did,” said Giles. “I didn't.”

“Oh.” Phillipa was excited. “Of course. I did hear that she brought him up. Francine, I mean. So perhaps she knew what he was up to, and was out to camouflage it.”

“She was certainly very upset when he disappeared. But apart from that, the whole thing seems to me perfectly clear, on the very direct evidence of Henry's boots, mud-stained, and his fisherman's clothes, thrown into that hall cupboard.”

“Pretty damning,” agreed Tony.

“But they weren't hidden,” cried Susan. “Were they really just chucked in anyhow?”

“No. Actually, the clothes were hanging on the pegs.”

“It's damning, all the same,” said Tony.

“But he hadn't tried to hide them,” Susan insisted. “If he did it, as he may have, why didn't he hide the evidence?”

“Probably thought it wouldn't matter. Or couldn't be proved. Actually, I suppose it can't be. He landed at the low tide in the night, when the hard is muddy, too. That would be his defence. And you can't break it. But I looked back as I left the house and
I
saw him look at the boots, after I'd pointed them out to him, and
I
saw him shut the cupboard door and lock it and go away into the library. I saw his face. I know.”

“How horrible!”

“I still don't see how he knew Miriam would go to the stage. Why should she? We weren't using it.
Shuna
was a long way off.”

“She didn't know that. She knew we were back, when we called, and I expect she thought we had the boat in the same place as before. Henry knew the inspector was going to arrange the confrontation. Naturally, he decided that the first thing the guilty Miriam would think of would be escape. Anywhere—by any means—to avoid immediate arrest. And therefore she would run to us—or rather, me. He knew her very well. He was right. She came straight down to the river. I saw her at the top section of the stage, looking wildly about and calling for me. And then …”

“Don't,” said Susan, gently, wrung by the pain in his face. “It was not your fault. Nothing was your fault. She had no right to make such demands on people. No one has.”

There was a long silence in the cockpit. Phillipa took the cold remains of breakfast below, and Susan followed her to help wash up. Giles handed the tiller to Tony and went forward himself, to sit down on the forehatch and watch the beautiful shape of the spinnaker bellying out above him, drawing
Shuna
along, while the little waves hissed under her bows.

They passed the Bridge buoy at the Needles at nine, the stream running now in their favour. It carried them past the narrows at Hurst, and on into the Solent.

“Are you going into Yarmouth?” Tony asked.

“No. Why?”

“I just wondered if you wanted to clear customs there.”

“They can come to me on my own mooring. I'd rather go straight in.”

So they sailed on up the Solent and turned into the Beaulieu river, where Giles had a mooring near Bucklers Hard. They flew their yellow flag from the entrance of the river, and after they had picked up the mooring and taken down the sails and tidied the decks, they sat down to wait.

“I ought to ring up my aunt,” Susan said. “I'll have to go and stay with her for a week or two, as I'm back so early. I hope she can have me.”

“Why don't you come to us?” said Phillipa.

“That's terribly sweet of you, but I think I'd better go to Aunt Mary if she can have me. She lives almost next door to us, so that would be very convenient for getting the house open again. She was expecting me, anyway, at the end of the month.”

“You can't go ashore before we're cleared,” Giles told her. “At least, you're not supposed to, and they don't like it in this country if yachts break too many of the rules.”

“You didn't have to do anything about customs in Brittany, did you?”

“There was a type who asked me for particulars the morning after we got to Penguerrec,” Giles answered. “No forms or that sort of thing. They can't be bothered. But they're very hot on it, in England.”

In about an hour the customs' launch came round from Southampton, having been warned by the harbour-master at Bucklers Hard. The crew of
Shuna
had so little to declare that the customs' officers became quite suspicious. Giles explained that they had been visiting friends abroad, where there had been sudden illness, which prevented them shopping in the last days before sailing home. This went down reasonably well, and the usual formalities were finished in a friendly spirit.

The whole party then went ashore. Both the Marshalls and Giles had cars, wrapped up in plastic covers, standing in the car park above the hard. Tony and Phillipa went ahead to get theirs uncovered, but Giles and Susan turned off into the Master Builders' Hotel to find a telephone.

When Susan had arranged to go to her Aunt Mary, Giles said, “I want to ring up Penguerrec. Have you got the number, by any chance?”

“Yes, I have. I was thinking of that, too. It's nearly two days since it happened, isn't it?”

They put the call in hand, and then ordered drinks and a table for lunch.

“No more cooking on board, Pip,” Giles told her, when the Marshalls joined them.

“Nice of you,” she answered.

“I'm driving Sue home,” he went on. “Newbury, was it?”

She laughed.

“You heard me say the exchange, didn't you? You don't miss anything. Yes, near Newbury.”

The call from Brittany came through about twenty minutes later. Giles went away to take it. When he came back, he sat down slowly, looking round at them in turn. Susan slipped her hand into his.

“Francine answered,” he said. “The doctors say Miriam's spinal cord has been crushed, and there will be no recovery, though she may live for some time, even years. Henry is worse. He is in bed again, with severe shock and a return of his symptoms of poisoning. His condition is dangerous.”

There was a long silence.

“So they may both die, after all,” said Tony, presently. “It's a pretty nasty thought, them lying there, next door to each other, hating each other's guts, and waiting to see who's going to be out first.”

“Don't,” said Phillipa.

“Recurrence of poisoning,” said Giles, heavily. “If that's true, he must have taken it himself, this time. Miriam couldn't be responsible, again.”