Touch and Go (10 page)

Mr. Brown said gently, “You were telling me about your nephews—”

Miss Marina rubbed her nose.

“Yes, yes, I was. But though I call them my nephews, you must understand that they were really the grand-children of my first cousin, who was a great deal older than I, you know, and they always called me Aunt, but I don't want you to be confused about them.”

“No—I see—” said Mr. Brown.

“And my nephew Henry—only you will remember that he wasn't really my nephew—my nephew Henry only died a few months ago, after a most sadly wandering life. He never recovered from the war. And poor dear Jack, who was Lucilla's father, was killed in 1916—or was it '15? He was married in 191, I know. He was only twenty, Mr. Brown. Lucilla was born in 1916, and her birthday is in January, so it must have been in 1916 that he was killed, because she was only four or five months old at the time. And poor Lucy—her mother, you know—didn't marry again for nearly three years. And I remember the date of her marriage perfectly well, because my poor Toto died the day before—a most attached spaniel whom I had for fifteen years—and that was in April 1919. Toto died on the fourth, and poor Lucy married Guy Raimond on the fifth.”

“And your other nephew?” said Mr. Brown, still very gently.

Miss Marina's pale eyes became suffused with moisture. There was a little pause, the sort of pause which indicates that the bounds of discretion have been overstepped. A tactful visitor should have changed the subject. Instead, Mr. Brown leaned a little nearer and said,

“You had a third nephew, hadn't you, Miss Hildred?”

Miss Marina fumbled for her handkerchief. She held it against the tip of her nose and said in an uncertain voice,

“Yes—Maurice.”

“Won't you tell me about him?”

Miss Marina looked at him with reproach. Nobody ever talked to her about Maurice, because they knew that it made her cry, and if she cried, she would be upset and Mercer would scold her and send for Dr. Drayton. He oughtn't to ask her about Maurice like that. She looked at him reproachfully. And then an odd thing happened—she didn't want to cry any more. She found herself saying, “He was such a dear little boy,” and it was an ease to her heart to say it.

Mr. Brown said, “Yes?”

“Such a very dear little boy. I saw a great deal of him then, but afterwards he went to school. I was living at Bournemouth, you know. I have lived there for many years—I am only here now on Lucilla's account. So once the boys went off to school I only saw them now and then. I did see Henry once after the war—it was on the Riviera—but the last time I saw Jack—Lucilla's father, you know—was on his sixteenth birthday. And I never saw Maurice after he was fifteen. He was missing in 1918, and we never heard any more, but I've never been able to believe that he was dead.”

John Brown looked away quickly. Miss Marina drew a long sighing breath. She felt a strange relief. After a moment she began to talk about Lucilla.

Mr. Darnac had drifted to the window, where Miss Trent was, ostensibly, showing him the view. Mr. Hildred having been called to the telephone, Sarah was wasting no words upon scenery.

“
Really
, Ran—of all the outrageous nerve!”

“What would you?” said Mr. Darnac with a fine gesture, “You go—I follow. It is of a simplicity.”

“Oh, is it? Well, just let me tell you, my lad, that you might quite easily have got me the sack!”

Mr. Darnac smiled an ingratiating smile.

“Adored angel, you look most beautiful when you are angry. The colour rises, the eyes sparkle, the eyebrows arch themselves,
et voila
, you are of a beauty so entrancing that you strike me dumb.”

“I hadn't noticed it,” said Sarah. Then she laughed. “Ran, you really are a priceless ass!”

Mr. Darnac grinned delightedly, showing very white teeth.

“That is all right then. You have, what you say, come off it—we are reconciled. Yes, yes, you must be, for I am bursting with things that I wish to say to you, and you would not like it that I should burst.”

“I shouldn't mind.”

“My angel, it would compromise you very seriously. No, no, we are definitely reconciled—the brass rags are parted no longer, as you say.”

“I don't.”

Mr. Darnac waved that away.

“Let us be serious. I have a thousand things to say to you before the old gentleman comes back. You are not yet, how do you say, affianced?”

“I don't say that either,” said Sarah.

Mr. Darnac frowned portentously.

“Will you be serious! I tell you I have a thousand things that I wish to say.”

“Well, why not say them, my dear Ran?”

He struck an attitude.

“Ah! Then I am no more
darling
to you—you have only this cold
dear
for me! The old gentleman he has—how do you call it?—cut me out!”

Sarah regarded him with mocking indulgence.

“Darling Ran, you never were
in
, so he couldn't cut you out. And he won't like it a bit if he hears you calling him an old gentleman. You're not telling me any of those thousand things, you know.”

“I come to them, and the first one it is a question. How do you find yourself here?”

“Very comfy, thanks.”

“They are amiable to you?”

I If you like to put it that way.”

“What is wrong with how I put it?”

“Well,
I
should say they were very nice to me.”

Mr. Darnac rolled the word about his tongue as though it were a sweet whose flavour he disliked.

“Nice—nice! Oh,
mon dieu
, what a word! A
nice
cup of tea—a
nice
day—a
nice
girl—a
nice
dance—a
nice
dinner! Oh la la! But now, Sarah, tell me—that Mr. Brown over there who makes his court to the old lady, who is he? Is he a friend of the family?”

“He's a client of Mr. Hildred's. He has come down here to sketch.”

“Does one sketch in the middle of the night?” said Bertrand.

“What do you mean, Ran?”

They were sitting in the broad window-seat, half turned towards the sunny garden. Their heads were close together and their voices low. Sarah's breath came a little more quickly.

“Ran, what
do
you mean?”

“Well, he intrigues me, that one. But you have not answered what I asked you—is he the old friend of the family?”

“No, I told you he wasn't. Mr. Hildred is a solicitor, and he's just one of his clients.”

Bertrand nodded.

“Very well then, he intrigues me very much. He also has a room at my Cow and Bush, you understand.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows.

“
Your
Cow and Bush?”

“
Ma foi
, yes—since I am living there. If you had not a heart of stone, you would be touched by my devotion. It is not everyone that would stay at a Cow and Bush for you, my angel. Well,
j'y suis et j'y reste
. And in the next room to mine there is this Mr. Brown. Do you know this Cow and Bush? See—the stair goes up from the hall, and at the top of the stair on the left-hand side there is my room, and on the right-hand side there is his room. The landlord he shuts his door at half-past ten and we all go to bed. We have drunk beer and we sleep. But me, I do not like beer, and so I do not drink it and I do not go to sleep. I read a book, I sit at my window, I put out my light and look at the moon and think about all sorts of things—perhaps I think about you.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Sarah.

Bertrand looked hurt.

“I find your disposition very hard and unfeminine. I tell you that I think of you alone at midnight, and you say ‘Fiddlesticks!'”

Sarah laughed again.

“Get along with your story, my child! You've nut in the local colour very nicely. Now let's get down to what happened. I suppose something really did happen?”

He nodded.

“I sat there, and I thought how much I hated beer and how much I adored you, and the moon went behind a cloud, and perhaps I got a little sleepy. And then all at once I heard something.”

“What?”

“I did not know. I looked out of the window. There was a little light, but not very much. I saw someone get out of Mr. Brown's window and climb down the wall. There is a pear-tree fastened against it, so it is quite easy for anyone to climb up and down. Well, he went down into the garden, and he went away round the house walking like a cat without any sound at all. I do not know what that first sound was—perhaps he knocks something over. But there were no more sounds. I think to myself, perhaps it is a burglar and he has been stealing Mr. Brown's money, so I go to his room and I knock upon the door. There is no answer. Then I take a candle and I go in, and there is no one there. And then I wonder about this Mr. Brown, and I go to bed and I go to sleep, and I do not know at what time Mr. Brown comes back. That was the first night that I was here. I have been here three nights, and every night this Mr. Brown has climbed out of his window. I find it irregular, even a little—what do you say?—fishy.”

It was at this moment that Geoffrey Hildred came back into the room.

“A call from my office,” he explained. “I am on holiday, but unfortunately they know where I am. You can't really get a holiday unless you can get away from the telephone. Marina, my dear, I'm thinking of cutting the wires.”

“My dear Geoffrey!” And then, “Mr. Brown was just asking me whether we hadn't any photographs of the boys—of Henry and Jack. He thinks he may have met Henry some years ago. But I was telling him that we haven't any photographs at all—not here. Poor Henry never would be photographed, and the others were so young when they—when Jack was killed. Poor little Lucilla's father, you know. He was only twenty. I have some snapshots taken when they were children, but I haven't got them here. But of course there would probably be copies up at Holme Fallow—wouldn't there, Geoffrey?”

“I don't know of any,” said Geoffrey Hildred, “unless—” He turned to Mr. Brown. “Now that's a very funny thing, Brown, we had a burglary up at Holme Fallow the other day—the house broken into, a man's muddy foot-marks all over the place—and the only thing interfered with was an old desk which held papers and photographs. The lock had been forced. I don't really know why it was kept locked, because there was nothing of value in it, but I suppose the fellow hoped to find something worth having, and then perhaps he was disturbed or something alarmed him. Anyhow nothing of any value was taken. Everything in the desk had been turned over, but it is quite impossible to say whether anything is missing.”

“I see,” said Mr. Brown in his quiet way.

CHAPTER XIII

Mr. Brown and Mr. Darnac stayed to tea.

Sarah was not quite sure afterwards who first started the idea of a picnic. She had been a good deal taken up with her own thoughts, and when she emerged from them it seemed to be a settled thing that there was to be a picnic, and the sooner the better, because no one could expect such wonderful weather to go on for ever. It would have to be a lunch picnic, because the evenings had begun to close in. The only point which hadn't been decided was where they should go. The question was being debated by the Hildred family, with the three outsiders as audience. The choice seemed to lie between the Roman camp on Burdon Hill, Trant Woods, and Burnt Heath. Lucilla fancied the woods. There was a stream, and there would be scarlet toadstools in a clearing.

Miss Marina instantly vetoed woods—“Far, far too damp, my dear.” Whereupon Lucilla made a face and joined Ricky in voting for the Roman camp—“And two of us can bicycle, and Sarah can take two more in
The Bomb
.”

Miss Marina looked shocked.

“But, my dear, you can have Giles and the Daimler.”

Lucilla blew her a kiss across the table.

“Darling, we don't want him. It would be exactly like a personally conducted tour, and if you won't let me go in
The Bomb
—”

“Oh, my dear child—no!”

Lucilla sighed.

“Well, I'd rather bicycle than be conducted by Giles. That's two on the bikes and three in
The Bomb
.”

“But what about Miss Hildred?” said Sarah.

Miss Marina explained in tones of horror that she never went for picnics—Mercer wouldn't hear of it for a moment—Mercer didn't really think she ought even to sit out in the garden as late in the year as this—only this morning Mercer had said quite sharply, “After all, ma'am, we're in October, and you oughtn't to forget it.”

Sarah turned to Uncle Geoffrey.

“But you're coming—aren't you?”

“Well, I'm afraid not. That call I had just now obliges me to go up to town. I shall have to leave you to get into mischief without me.”

“I hope no one will get into mischief at all,” said Miss Marina firmly.

Sarah retired into her thoughts again. There was something she wanted to say, but she didn't quite know the best way of getting it said. Bertrand's story about Mr. Brown and his midnight wanderings had given her a lot to think about. She wondered if it was he who had frightened Lucilla. She could imagine no reason why he should have done so. The fact remained that Lucilla was convinced that someone had played a trick to frighten her, and if Mr. Brown was given to mysterious wanderings at night, it might have been he. The mysterious something which had dashed itself against the window might have been an owl, but Sarah wasn't able to feel as certain of this as she would have liked. Lucilla obviously did not believe that it was an owl. She believed that someone was trying to frighten her, and that this someone, having discovered that it was Sarah who was now occupying the blue room, would run no further risks.
But
if this someone—who might be Mr. Brown—could be induced to believe that Lucilla had returned to the blue room, he might make another attempt. Sarah thought she would dearly like to catch him at it. She hadn't forgotten the horrid moment between sleeping and waking when she had heard that clawing on the window-pane.