Authors: Emma Smith
“Now listen to me,” said Vigers. “I’m a detective—I come from Scotland Yard. You’ve heard of Scotland Yard, I suppose? It’s the most important branch of the police force—can you follow what I’m saying? Very well, then—I’ve got to see the prisoner for a couple of minutes. That’s what I’ve come for. But I don’t want your local police to know I’m here because local police don’t like Scotland Yard—do you understand me? If you don’t, it really doesn’t matter—you’ll understand this, I’m sure. Here is a pound—”
He was holding it up as he spoke and Ivor enjoyed a split second of delighted self-congratulation at this proof that he had been right when he guessed Vigers to be a born briber, the sort of man who, in his contempt for people, believed enough money could buy anything from anyone.
“It’s yours,” he was saying. “You can have it if you tell me where he is. You’re lucky, aren’t you? A pound is very much nicer than a twisted arm.”
“I promised I wouldn’t tell,” mumbled Ivor. “I don’t want to get in any trouble.”
“Why should you get into trouble? If you say nothing, no one will know. I have to see him for a few minutes, that’s all, and then I’ll be gone. Now come—if you want your pound, be quick. I’m in a hurry. Where is he?”
Ivor judged it best to allow himself another moment of hesitation before giving way.
“He’s down in our cellar, over the far end behind some barrels—that’s where they put him. He wouldn’t ever get from there, they said.”
“They were right,” said Vigers, very softly. “He’ll never get from there. And where is the entrance to this cellar of yours, boy? In the kitchen, I suppose.”
“No, it’s not,” said Ivor. He was pointing. “It’s over by the scullery window, see? Under the shed roof.”
“Outside!
” exclaimed Vigers. “Is
that
where it is?” His eyes shone with an extraordinary brilliance. “A cellar with its entrance outside! What luck! Luck? It’s royal treatment by the gods of chance! Fate only grants such favours to the very few—did you know that, boy?—to the selected winners! To those who can do
as they like,”
he breathed, “and never lose!”
“He’s mad,” thought Ivor. Aloud he said, “But supposing someone was to come to the door while you’re down inside the cellar—what then?”
With all his heart he hoped his mother would not suddenly decide to help him to feed and water the stock. He and Vigers stood silent, both intently studying the house, both calculating the risks involved.
“What’s on the other side of that window?” asked Vigers.
“Nothing much—it’s where we hang the coats and that.”
“And no one’s come to the door for the last five minutes. Five more—that’s all I need. Another five will do it,” said Vigers, deciding. “Here, take your money.”
He had already propped his ski-sticks in the holly-bush. Now he bent and freed his feet from the skis. Then he pushed up the latch of the gate and slipped through.
“Come along—show me,” he said brusquely to Ivor.
They crossed the yard together. There lay the slab of stone with an iron ring let into the centre of it. And without doubt the slab had been recently lifted out and then set back again: the crack surrounding it was chipped clear of ice, and the iron ring lay loose. Ivor had been able to count with certainty on this corroborating evidence when he spun his story, having himself held the torch the previous night while his father raised the stone so as to fetch up a supply of best cider for their unexpected visitor, the Ambassador; moreover, his mother had only that morning sent Colin to the cellar for a bottle of her homemade cherry brandy to carry up to the Gwyntfa as a form of medicine in case of need. There was nothing, as Ivor had known, in the appearance of the flagstone to arouse Vigers’ suspicions.
“I’ll keep a look-out for you,” he volunteered, as one conspirator to another, “and if I bang the bucket down loud it’ll mean you’re to wait a bit, see?”
Vigers nodded. He bent and caught hold of the iron ring and swung the flagstone to one side, partially uncovering a square black hole, the cellar entrance. A flight of stone steps led down into the darkness below. Used to his father’s deliberate movements, Ivor was taken by surprise at the speed with which Vigers twisted around and lowered himself, sinuous as a snake, through the narrow gap.
“Hey—mister!”
“Yes? What is it?”
Vigers had paused. His head was already several inches lower than ground level. Ivor, kneeling at the brink of the hole, saw that he now held in one hand a torch and in his other a revolver—the gun that Amy had said he was bound to have. Somehow the actual sight of it was shocking to Ivor: a gun imagined was different from a gun seen.
“Don’t you mean to put the top back on, then?”
“No,” said Vigers, curtly.
Ivor had been certain that Vigers would replace the flagstone for the sake of his own safety.
“But supposing they come while you’re down there—those policemen?” he whispered urgently. “I can’t get the top back over myself, not fast enough. What am I going to say to them?”
There was no reply from Vigers. He had reached the bottom of the steps. The shaft of torchlight pierced the gloom below, darting left and right. Ivor felt sick with dismay: it was all happening too quickly. He was losing his opportunity. He needed more time. In a state of frenzy that was genuine, although the reason he gave for it was not, he called down:
“I’ve got to pull the top over—there’s somebody coming—I’ll tell you when they’ve gone.”
Then with all his strength he dragged at the iron ring. The ground was slippery. More easily than he had expected the slab slid forward and bedded into its groove. For an extra warning, he clattered the bucket.
Would Vigers believe him? Or would he spring up the stairs and heave the flagstone out from underneath with as little effort as he had swung it off from above? Or would there be just sufficient doubt in his mind to make him wonder, and, wondering, wait? Wait for how long? How long before the beam of his torch had probed into every corner, behind every box and barrel, and found there was nobody tied up, nobody else in the cellar at all, that he had been deceived, betrayed into making a fool of himself, mocked? How much time was there? Ivor asked himself as he sprinted, or tried desperately to sprint, uphill across the frozen yard, his feet slithering as he ran. How much time, counted in seconds, did he have, and was it going to be enough?
On the further side of the yard, flanked by the big barn, sheltered by the hay-loft above it, stood their old red tractor. To Ivor there seemed to be an immeasurable distance stretching between him and that old red tractor. It was too far off; he would never reach it in a hundred years. And then he was there, clinging to it, panting, scrambling up into the seat, which was surely higher than it had ever been before. And now was the moment, now, when this terrifying gamble could be utterly lost: now, if the engine refused to start. Sometimes it fired at the first pull and sometimes Ivor had seen his father try and try, and curse the machine, and climb down again to tinker with screws and wires. But it had to start for him—
now
—it
had
to! Ivor shut his eyes and pulled, and the engine roared into life. He shoved the gear lever forward, let in the clutch, let go the brake. Like a bull unchained the tractor charged across the yard.
For one suspended beat of his heart Ivor thought he was going too fast, that the tractor was out of his control and he would never be able to prevent it from crashing full tilt into the wall of the house. As hard as he could he trod on the foot-brake, and so as to make doubly sure, hauled on the hand-brake as well. The wheels locked. The whole huge contraption slewed round at right angles to the scullery window, smashed into one of the posts that upheld the shed roof, splintering it like a matchstick and bringing down a noisy shower of slates; and stopped. The scullery door flew open. Mrs Protheroe stood there, white-faced. Ket, barking, bounded past her.
“Ivor! Whatever happened?”
“Get inside, Mum! Get away from the door!” shouted Ivor, almost falling down from the high seat, frantic to find out whereabouts this unpremeditated skid had landed him. It could be disastrous, absolutely.
He was still yelling at his mother when his feet struck the ground. Then he saw how it was, and his eyes widened in awe, and the warning died on his lips. His intention had indeed been accomplished, though not by himself. Accident had done for him what his own wild efforts had failed to do, and one of the giant rear-wheels of the tractor rested squarely and fully across the cellar flagstone, sealing it.
Ivor drew a deep breath.
“Oh, Ket—what luck!” said he, not realizing that he was quoting Vigers. “What beautiful luck!”
“Ivor, Ivor! Are you all right?”
“And to think he gave me a pound for it, too!”
Amy had measles, made worse by exposure and exhaustion. She lay in the Protheroes’ big spare bedroom with her temperature rising and rising. She would do better, the doctor said, when the spots appeared. Meanwhile she panted and tossed, uttering, in her sleep, cries of fear and warning, and when she was awake calling for her grandmother over and over. Mrs Bowen hardly stirred from her side.
“It’s all right, Amy—Granny’s here. I shan’t leave you. See—I’m here!”
But Amy, clutching her hand, stared at her with wide open eyes and called for her still, not knowing who she was.
For days people went softly up and down the stairs. Meals were eaten almost in silence and even the most interesting news was of no interest to them now. Everyone knew that everyone else was wondering if Amy were going to die.
But she did not die. In due course she became covered in spots. Mrs Bowen said there were so many it would have been hard work to put a sixpence in between them, glad of a joke, no matter how small, to have something to smile at after so long. But when she overheard Mr Pugh declaring that Amy’s measles came as a relief to his conscience, since he had more or less promised the sergeant over at Llwynffynnon it was the measles she had, Mrs Bowen was very angry indeed.
“Victor Pugh, I’m ashamed to hear you say so,” she blazed out at him. “You surely don’t count your conscience more important than that child’s life?”
“Why no, indeed, Mrs Bowen, I never meant any such thing,” he stammered. “They tell me she’s getting better—on the mend, I was told.”
“So she is—no thanks to you and your conscience,” retorted Mrs Bowen severely.
Amy was getting better. One afternoon, awakening from a long sleep, her forehead cool and her thoughts tranquil, she lay watching rain hitting against the window. There had been a change in the weather. She Eked the sight and the sound of rain: it made her feel wonderfully snug and safe.
“No more snow,” she said aloud.
Mrs Bowen, who had been sitting by the fire, put down her sewing and came across to the bedside.
“So you’ve woken up!”
“I’ve been awake for a long time.”
“Well, I never! Why didn’t you let me know before? I’ve got some soup for you downstairs, keeping hot.”
“I’m not hungry, Granny.”
“I don’t suppose you are, but you must try to eat—you’ve gone so thin this last week or two. Now that the fever’s over we’ve got to see if we can’t feed you up, Amy. You’re going to need your strength.”
“Am I? What for, specially?”
“I didn’t say specially for anything. It’s just that I want to have you looking yourself again. With those big eyes and those white cheeks you’re like a little ghost instead of my girl.”
“I don’t feel I want to eat now, though, Granny. I’d rather you stopped here and talked to me a while.”
“I’ll talk as much as you like, Amy, so long as it’s not about anything that’s going to send your temperature up. The doctor said it was very important for you to rest your mind, remember. You know how particular he was you weren’t to get excited.”
Mrs Bowen had already a day or so earlier given Amy a carefully sedated account of what had taken place at the Gwyntfa on the morning of the great blizzard, her aim being to tell only as much as would keep Amy from worrying about it. There would be time enough later on, she felt, to fill in the details and the drama. And Amy did not press her, possibly because she too felt there would be plenty of time later; or possibly because she was in any case not short of enthralling conversation, having managed to evade her grandmother’s ban on exciting talk by the simple device of sending for the boys at frequent intervals, using one pretext or another.
“Can I have Queenie up for a bit?” she would say. “Can I have Mick? I’d like Colin and Ray to bring them. Ivor can fetch them away later.”
These requests caused Mrs Bowen to purse her lips and hesitate:
“They mustn’t stay for more than a few minutes, then.”
But the three boys had no such hesitation. They responded with alacrity, and the more Amy summoned them the better they liked it. Amy wanted to know what had happened, and they thoroughly enjoyed telling her—and listening to each other telling her, and interrupting each other, and remembering bits they had forgotten before and telling it all over again. It was not just what they had done that had to be described but also their varying emotions, what they had felt and supposed and feared and expected, moment by moment. One way and another there was a great deal to recount, and as the visits were short there had to be as many visits as possible.
At first this continual coming and going benefited Queenie and Mick. The Dintirion cats and dogs had deeply resented the appearance of newcomers in their kitchen, and had shown their resentment by spitting and snarling, and scratching and snapping, until, for their own protection, Mick and Queenie had been relegated to a distant outhouse. During the worst of Amy’s illness their life had been very dismal; as she improved, their existence too took a turn for the better. And Amy was so pleased to see them again, and minded so much when they were taken away from her that soon Queenie was accepted as a resident in the bedroom and even Mick, who could never learn to be quite as discreetly silent in his behaviour, was carried out only when she dropped off to sleep. But by this time the visiting habit had been established and Amy was spared the need to invent new reasons.