There May Be Danger (6 page)

But the powder was damp, and even this squib did not go off properly. Its utterer paused in an angry and discomfited fashion, as if she were trying to set light to a new one, and then, giving it up, made a right-about-turn and departed, her umbrella still clasped rigidly in front of her, her empty basket on her arm, and her comical oilskin pixie-hood giving her the look, from behind, of a very inflexible and alarming little girl. She stumped down the garden steps and disappeared.

“Well!” exclaimed Mrs. Howells, still very red in the face. “I never did expect to be insulted in my own shop over half-a-pound of sultanas!” Catching Kate's eye, she moderated her wrath, and half-smiled. “That was all because I could not sell Ann Gilliam more than half-a-pound of sultanas this week, Miss Mayhew! Does she think I would not rather sell her a pound, or two pounds, if I could?”

“Who is she?” inquired Kate, taking off her oilskin coat.

“She lives up on Rhosbach at the Cefn,” said Mrs. Howells. “She has a little smallholding there that her auntie had before her. She is a great gossip. I don't know will Cornelius like it when I tell him I have quarrelled with her. She will say all sorts of things about me in the village now, I shouldn't wonder!”

The gaunt elderly person by the window-sill collected his loose limbs together and crossed over to the counter.

“I would not be worrying your head about that, Mrs. Howells. There is women that gives forth venom like the snake does because it is in their nature, and Miss Gilliam is one of them, and her auntie was the same, and her great-auntie, who had the Cefn before that, was worst of any!”

Kate thought that the speaker, scarcely looked old enough to have been acquainted with so many of this curious dynasty of Gilliam, which seemed to dispense with parents and consist entirely of aunts and nieces. He appeared to be a well-preserved fifty-five, a gaunt, loose-hung man with an eagle-like cut of profile, a ruddy complexion somewhat dimmed by a grey stubble, a dark, piercing and observant eye, and long iron-black hair that fell in a lock across his lined forehead and curled over the collar of his ancient, green-black, homespun coat. A handkerchief knotted round his scrawny throat gave the last touch of the poet, rather than of the labourer, to his distinguished looks. But his hands, large, stiff and glazed, were those of a labourer rather than a poet, as they fumbled with an old purse he had taken from his pocket. Kate wondered whether he had in that purse the Roman coin he had found on Pentrewer Tump.

Evidently the opening of the purse brought the same subject to Mr. Gwyn Lupton's mind, for having asked for two-pennyworth of cloves for his wife's tooth-ache, he went on with melodious melancholy:

“Miss Gilliam has no business to speak as if I was for ever delving in the ground for treasure as the pigs does after roots. It was setting rabbit snares in the evening after my work that I walked upon the tump, and it was in the rabbit-hole, there at my feet, I saw the piece of money.”

Could I see it?” ventured Kate.

Gwyn Lupton turned his dark, majestic gaze upon her and shook his head.

I have not got it any longer, young lady. The gentleman at the Veault, where I am working, is an antiquary gentleman and very interested in the old remnants of our forefathers. He has bought it off me for his collection. I was not anxious to sell it,” said Gwyn Lupton grandly, “but since he wished to buy it I obliged him. Five pounds he gave me—it may have been worth more, I cannot tell.”

“Five pounds! It must have been something unusual. Not many old silver coins are worth that.”

“I made a mould in putty of the piece of money, to keep as a curiosity, and one day when you are passing my place at Pentrewer, I will show it you if you will please to step in. But the piece of money is at the Veault. If you are ever in that direction, call at the Veault, young lady, and ask Mr. Morrison to show you the piece of money. Say Gwyn Lupton sent you. Mr. Morrison is a very obliging gentleman, and if you likes old houses, young lady—and most London ladies does, I have noticed—you will like to see the Veault. It is a very ancient old timber house. They say as King Charles hid there when he was running away off to France one time.”

Kate could not help smiling at poor King Charles, that peripatetic monarch, under the patronage of whose shade so many inns, old manors and oak trees flourish!

“I have been working on the Veault for Mr. Hufton the builder, getting it ready for the London children that is coming there, so I knows what I am telling you about, young lady. There is some grand old panelled rooms there, if you likes panelled rooms, and most London ladies does, I has noticed. There is a spit, too, in the kitchen, and some of the ceilings has their beams and joists showing, and there is a front staircase that has carved newel-posts and a back staircase that is like a corkscrew,” said Gwyn Lupton, who was evidently a pretty good judge of the taste of lady fanciers of house property. He added: “And now there is four baths, no less, and lavatories galorum.”

“When will the children be coming, Mr. Lupton, have you heard?” asked Mrs. Howells, shaking the cloves out of a large tin on to the scales.

“Pretty soon, I expect, Mrs. Howells. The young lady from the Abbey Farm was at the Veault the day before yesterday to fix up with Mrs. Morrison about supplying the milk for the children.” 

“That will be your Land Army friend, Miss Mayhew!”

“Oh, indeed, young lady, so the young lady from the Abbey Farm is a friend of yours?” said Gwyn Lupton with melodious interest. “Well, Llanhalo Abbey is an old ancient place, too, but there is not so much to see there as there is at the Veault, and what you see you has to pay sixpence for.” Mr. Lupton seemed firmly convinced that old houses were Kate's chief interest in life. As a carpenter, reflected Kate, he probably had to listen to a good deal of feminine gush about oak beams and such objects. He pocketed the screw of cloves and picked two pennies out of his little black purse.

“Gideon Atkins isn't popular, is he?” commented Kate, amused.

The bard, planking down his two pennies, flashed his remote and haughty glance at her.

“Good opinions cannot be bought with gold, it is true, but bad opinions is the reward of the miser,” he observed. “There is men in this world thinks so much of money they doesn't know the value of anything, and Gideon Atkins is such a man. He is a man who would die to save a doctor's bill, if it were not for the funeral expenses that would follow.”

Kate wondered whether Aminta, who was a detached and somewhat unobservant girl, was aware that her employer's funeral formed one of the more frequent, and more cheerful, topics of local conversation. Gwyn Lupton's haughty and poetic features wore quite a rapt expression.

“Well, Mrs. Howells, well, young lady, I must take my leave of you, for my wife is suffering great agonies, poor woman, and I must not be lingering on my way to her more than is reasonable. Do not forget, young lady, when you are at Llanhalo, seeing your friend, to go to the Veault and ask Mr. Morrison to show you Gwyn Lupton's piece of money. Good-day to you, Mrs. Howells, I would not be worrying if I was you about Miss Gilliam's tongue. There is other people has tongues besides Miss Gilliam, and could use them if they liked.”

And with this dark observation Gwyn Lupton departed, bumping out with his fist and sticking on the back of his head an ancient felt hat that he had been carrying flattened under his arm.

“If words could charm away the tooth-ache, Gwyn Lupton's wife would not be sending for cloves!” observed Mrs. Howells with a smile.

“What did he mean by that last bit?” Kate inquired, taking a seat by the counter and studying the selection of cigarettes that shared a little glass case with some dummy packets of chocolate. 

“Well, I dare say as being a carpenter and working a lot in people s houses, Gwyn Lupton gets to know things about the people he works for as they wouldn't always like to have spread about,” explained Mrs. Howells.

Kate smiled. No doubt a village carpenter did possess grand opportunities for inspecting the skeletons in his neighbour's cupboards before putting the doors right!

“That was what he meant, I expect. There isn't many houses about here as Gwyn Lupton hasn't done repairs in, one time and another. Well, I must be getting on with my polishing.”

“Can you remember, Mrs. Howells, Sidney ever saying anything about making a net?”

“A net!” echoed Mrs. Howells, pausing with the flap of the counter held up in her hand. “No, I don't remember ever he said anything about such a thing. What kind of net?”

“I don't know. But I've just been to the County Library. And I asked the woman there if she could remember anything Sidney Brentwood did or said when he went to the library to take that book out—you know, the one you showed me in his bedroom. And she said that he had asked her whether there was a book in the library about making nets.”

“Net!”

“Yes. Apparently he didn't go into any details, and she didn't ask for them. She just said that ‘Things for a Boy to Do' would be the only book in the library that might have a chapter on net-making, and he at once took it out and went off with it.”

“Nets!” echoed Mr Howells again, letting her counter fall and shaking her head in a mystified manner. “No, I cannot recollect that Sidney ever said anything at all about nets. Would it be nets for rabbiting, I wonder, or—”

“I don't know. It seems he just wanted to know how to make a net. It's queer, isn't it, Mrs. Howells? What could he have wanted a net for? What are nets used for?”

“Well, for snaring—they uses them sometimes rabbiting, and for keeping haystacks down. And for putting over fruit. But if Sidney had wanted to go rabbit-snaring he could have borrowed a net, there's plenty about!”

“He may not have wanted a net, I suppose. He may have just wanted for some reason to know how to make one,” said Kate, though from what she had heard of Sidney Brentwood his interests were more likely to be practical than theoretical.

A little quiver passed over Mrs. Howells' broad rosy face. “If that was all he wanted, Corney could have showed him how to do netting! But boys is funny, they will not say what is mostly in their hearts, they gives themselves and everyone else a lot of trouble sooner than speak out, they is like that, boys!”

Mrs. Howells departed to her polishing in the already brightly polished kitchen, and Kate sat a moment or two in the shop, reflecting on these last remarks. If Sidney had wanted to learn netting sufficiently to look for a book on the subject in the library, and yet had not mentioned his desire to Mr. and Mrs. Howells, it seemed probable that his net-making was connected with something that he wanted to keep a secret. Nets! thought Kate, bird-nets, fish-nets, butterfly-nets, camouflage-nets, nets for rabbiting, nets for snares—

There was an echo here of what Kate had been thinking as she toiled home on her bicycle. Snares were dangerous—for the snared creature. And sometimes a hunter was caught with his own snare, and the danger was his. Was there a connection between Sidney's interest in nets and his departure? Had he already made his net secretly before he went? Kate picked up her oilskin coat and went upstairs to her bedroom. Taking up “Things for a Boy to Do,” she was about to turn to the index when she found it was unnecessary. The book fell open at page 105, Netting. The page had that peculiarly fingered and dingy appearance reading matter acquires when the young idea has been poring over it.

“For Netting,” read Kate, “a netting needle and a spool are needed—”

And, Kate supposed, quite a lot of string. If Sidney had been secretly practising net-making during the month before he went—perhaps during those fight evenings when Mrs. Howells had thought him touring the countryside on his bicycle—he must have acquired his materials from somewhere. No doubt it was possible to buy twine and netting needles at Llanfyn, which was the nearest market-town. But, if Sidney had bought his materials there, the police would surely have discovered it and questioned Mrs. Howells about the transaction?

Or Sidney might have got his materials privately, as a gift, or loan. But if so, why had the giver kept the matter so quiet that Mrs. Howells had not heard of it? Was the giver involved in whatever danger had overtaken Sidney? Did he even know —too well, perhaps—what had happened to the boy?

Kate, standing there in the little bedroom with the boy's book in her hands, became aware that she was casting her own nets a bit wide. They were catching at all kinds of distant, sinister possibilities which she was quite unable to draw in and examine. For the present, she had better attend to collecting facts, rather than to casting about for possibilities. She thought a bicycle-ride would clear her head, and went downstairs to raise the saddle of Mrs. Evan's bicycle a couple of inches, and to tell Mrs. Howells that she was going over to Llanhalo and would not be back till evening.

Kate's cycle-ride took her downhill and up again on a road that skirted along the lower slopes of Rhosbach, on whose far upper slopes the distant sheep seemed to crawl like lice. Below her, to her left, when she could glimpse the landscape through the tall hedges and the woods that clung here and there around the base of the hills, lay wide, rolling tracts of farmland and handsome old magpie houses showing tantalisingly here and there behind the yew trees which protected them from the winds.

Occasionally a farmer's battered motor car, or a flock of sheep with drover and collie, passed her on the road. And once a gipsy's caravan went by, with two rough ponies tied on behind the vans, and a couple of half-grown boys walking alongside.

As they passed her, Kate thought of Sidney, and even turned her head, as if hoping to see, sitting in the back doorway of the lumbering vehicle, a fair-skinned, fair-haired boy. But the person who sat on the step nursing a baby and smoking a cigarette was an old wrinkled woman, anything but fair-skinned.