The Longer Bodies (7 page)

Priscilla's face clouded.

‘I do believe you, Clive,' she stated, glaring defiantly at her brothers. ‘Some nasty things happened in this house last night.'

‘“There is something terrible about this house,”' quoted Malpas solemnly. He winked at Francis.

‘It isn't funny,' said Priscilla. She poured out a second cup of coffee for herself and dropped in a lump of sugar like a full stop. It appeared that the subject was closed. Timon Anthony reopened it.

‘Well, I tell you all for the twenty-ninth time that it was real blood on the tips of those two javelins —or, as Joe Herring will have it—on that one javelin which made positively two appearances. Blood, children, blood!'

He smacked his lips and looked wickedly across the table at the angular Miss Caddick.

‘And one of the poor little bunnies was missing yesterday,' he added pointedly. ‘I believe the cannibal Kost ate it, having first dipped the javelin in its ber-lud.'

‘There's another funny thing, if you really want to know,' said Clive Brown-Jenkins. ‘And that's the tale of the old iron pot, or, in this case, of Great-aunt's bathchair. Which of you girls was taking it out for a walk at about ten minutes to one this morning? It passed the wooden door of the sunk garden at, roughly, one o'clock.'

Before anyone else could reply, Priscilla Yeomond broke in.

‘You needn't laugh at him,' she said. ‘He heard it. I saw it.'

‘
Saw
it?' said Miss Caddick, interested. All eyes turned upon the thin, angular, upright woman. ‘Did you, really?'

‘Yes,' replied Priscilla. ‘The moon came out and I saw it quite clearly. Someone was in it, and someone—a man, I think—was pushing it. It was going along ever so fast. The man behind was running.'

‘I knew it went out at nights,' said Miss Caddick, with a little shudder. She turned to Hilary. ‘I said so, you remember.'

‘No longer ago than yesterday, sister Caddick,' replied the young man. ‘I disbelieved you. I apologize. Sweet coz, forgive me.'

‘No I didn't mean that. I mean, corroboration,' said Miss Caddick vaguely. She glanced into her cup, drank what remained of its contents, glanced at her watch, and rose from the table.

‘You must please excuse me,' she said. ‘Mrs Puddequet will wish to interview the cook, and I must go along and help her to dress first.'

‘I'll tell you another rum thing,' said Hilary slowly, when Miss Caddick had gone. ‘I went for a swim this morning.' He held up his hand to stem the tide of brotherly comment which this simple statement immediately invoked. ‘No, I'm not calling you stinkers,' he protested. ‘Let me get on. Well, I dived a bit deep and my fingers touched something clammy.'

‘Mud,' said Francis helpfully.

‘Couldn't have been mud,' said Timon Anthony. ‘Old lady had it all cleaned out and decoded—I mean deodorized, and the bottom nicely sanded with the best materials only—you should have been here when it was all being done! There's no mud within a hundred feet of the diving-boards, I know.'

‘Well,' continued Hilary, ‘it felt like somebody's face! You know when you play water polo, and you push a chap's face with your foot—'

‘What sort of water polo do
you
play, for heaven's sake?' asked Richard Cowes.

‘Oh, shut up, Dick,' said Priscilla. ‘Go on, H.'

‘Yes, well, it felt like a face on the end of your foot, only it was my hands that grabbed it,' explained Hilary. ‘I expect really it was a fish.'

‘Oh, yes. A fish would stop there at the bottom of the water while your great paws grabbed hold of it,' said Celia Brown-Jenkins with fine scorn. ‘I am surprised that a boy like you should be such a little liar.'

The approval of the Yeomond family at this frank expression of their own sentiments was only quelled by the entrance of old Mrs Puddequet in her bathchair. She seemed annoyed. Miss Caddick, who was pushing the bathchair, was finishing a sentence as they came through the doorway.

‘And so, of course, I sent him away,' she said.

‘I should think so too,' squealed Great-aunt Puddequet. ‘But that is no reason for leaving me to be dressed by Amaris Cowes and the cook, particularly as the cook is greatly incensed at the loss of her privately owned and almost new clothesline!'

‘Amaris?' cried Richard. ‘You didn't say Amaris, did you, Aunt?'

Old Mrs Puddequet turned her yellowish eyes upon him.

‘I have never been told that my articulation is indistinct, Grandnephew,' she retorted. ‘You will find your sister in the sunk garden. I offered her breakfast. She refused it. I asked her for explanations. She laughed at me. It appears that at just after three o'clock this morning she arrived on a milk train at Market Longer station and walked to the house. She says that she did not expect to gain admission to the house, so she strolled about until she found an open door to one of the erections in the grounds, and there'—Great-aunt Puddequet's scandalized tones rose higher and higher in her indignation—‘she slept. Slept! With the door wide open!'

‘That was for reasons of health, Great-aunt,' said Amaris Cowes from the doorway.

She sauntered in, both hands in the pockets of her knitted suit, large walking-shoes on her feet, and a cap of closely cropped black hair crowning her well-poised head. Her face was large, clever, and ugly; her dark-blue eyes deep-set and austere. She had a prizefighter's jowl, and, when she took them out of her pockets to accept and light the cigarette which her brother immediately proffered, exceedingly slender and beautiful hands.

‘Thanks, Dick,' she said, as he returned the case to his pocket. She grinned, and nodded to the others. Malpas Yeomond offered her his chair. Celia poured out coffee. Clive rang the bell for hot food. Timon Anthony tilted back his chair and regarded her with intense interest. At length he restored the chair to its normal position on four legs and observed negligently, ‘The New Woman.'

‘As a matter of fact,' said Amaris Cowes, taking careful stock of him, ‘I regard myself as the direct reincarnation of Lilith, the legendary wife of our great forefather.'

‘Irreverent,' squealed Great-aunt Puddequet, who objected to becoming part of the background to this exceedingly vital figure. Amaris Cowes stared at her.

‘Great-aunt,' she said slowly, ‘after breakfast I want to see the sunk garden again. I've been looking at it for half an hour, and I want to look at it again in company with somebody who knows it really well. And tell me—who
is
the ancient Roman complete with sword? Not Horatius keeping the bridge, surely?'

She paused. Great-aunt Puddequet said nothing. Her yellowish eyes glowered suspiciously upon this ugly duckling who was so obviously something of a swan.

‘That sunk garden,' Amaris Cowes went on, taking the cigarette from between her lips and making a graceful and expressive gesture with her left arm, ‘that sunk garden has a soul, Great-aunt.'

She replaced the cigarette, took a plate of kidneys and bacon from the maid, and accepted a piece of bread from a plate proffered by Hilary.

‘Throw that thing away and get your breakfast, do,' said Celia. ‘You must be starving.'

Amaris Cowes took out the cigarette, glanced at it, and then tossed it through the open window. She grinned at Celia and picked up her knife and fork.

‘I am,' she said.

It is always interesting to watch other people eat. The Yeomonds, the two Brown-Jenkins, her brother Richard, even Great-aunt Puddequet and her companion followed the movements of Amaris as she ate a hearty meal.

Just as she had refused a fourth cup of coffee, a maid entered and conferred with Miss Caddick.

‘Dear me,' the angular lady remarked. ‘Ask him into the library.'

‘Who?' demanded Great-aunt Puddequet peevishly.

‘Jane says it is the sergeant from Market Longer Police Station,' replied Miss Caddick. ‘They seem to have lost a man called Jacob Hobson. At least, his wife has. So awkward, of course, to lose one's husband at the weekend.'

‘
Lost him?
' squealed Great-aunt Puddequet. ‘Well, do they suppose I've found him? Go along at once, companion, and send the sergeant away. What nonsense to come here after every drunk and disorderly ruffian in the village! What was Constable Copple thinking about, to allow such a man to get lost?'

‘I don't know, Mrs Puddequet. I'll go and ask,' said Miss Caddick obediently.

‘Send the sergeant to me. I'll talk to him,' squealed the old lady, slapping the arm of the bathchair with rage. ‘How dare he come chasing his ridiculous ne'er-do-wells into my house!'

In a short time Miss Caddick returned with the sergeant in tow. He was red and warm, for he had just cycled too rapidly, and too soon after breakfast, up a fairly steep hill.

‘Now, sergeant,' snapped Great-aunt Puddequet.

‘Well, mam,' replied the sergeant, wiping his face, ‘it's like this. Police Constable Copple of this village rung us up an hour ago to say a certain Jacob Hobson, also of this village, has never been home since tea last night, and they can't find him anywhere.'

‘But what—' began Great-aunt Puddequet.

The sergeant held up a large, red, soothing hand.

‘One minute, mam. We have evidence to show that this Hobson was at the pub—public house in the village until about a quarter-past nine last night. He then announced 'is intention of coming here to complain about the state of the roof of his cottage, it being on your land and him hoping you would do something to have it repaired, and he was seen by reliable witnesses to start off in this direction. He was pretty well drunk, mam, according to the same witnesses, and the idea of his wife is that he may have fallen in your lake.'

‘Fallen into the mere?' squealed Great-aunt Puddequet with tremendous vigour. ‘Then she can think herself lucky if he has! A drunken, poaching, graceless, wife-beating ruffian if ever there was one.'

‘And do
you
think he has fallen into the mere, sergeant?' enquired Timon Anthony.

‘Well, sir, it's no odds to me what he's done, but his wife seemed certain that's what must have happened, so Constable Copple asked if we'd come over with the apparatus and get permission to drag the lake. I suppose you've no objection, mam?' he added, turning to Great-aunt Puddequet. ‘You see,' he added tactfully, ‘if he
has
fell in the lake, he'll have to be got out some time, so it may as well be now.'

‘I have every objection!' shrieked the old lady. ‘But get on! Get on! Amaris Cowes, come out and see the sunk garden!'

‘Let in the clutch, Companion Caddick,' whispered Hilary to the motive power of the bathchair. Miss Caddick, looking very pale, started at hearing herself addressed, and hastily ran the bathchair out on to the terrace.

Malpas turned to the sergeant.

‘No need to go to all that bother unless you like, sergeant, you know,' he said, good-naturedly. ‘At least, not at first. One of us will go on to the high diving-board and look down into the water. Then, unless he's caught up among the weeds downstream, we ought to spot him easily enough if he's there. But wouldn't a body—Hullo! What the devil's up with you?' He broke off at sight of his young brother's face.

‘He's there! He's there! He's drowned all right!' stuttered Hilary, with cheeks like chalk. ‘I—I dived right on to him before breakfast! I knew it was a face! Couldn't have been anything else. A dead man! Ugh!'

With rubber-soled shoes on his feet, a sweater pulled over his running vest, a light-coloured knapsack slung on his back, and watched by a small crowd of interested spectators—which included the sergeant from Market Longer, Constables White and Willis, also from Market Longer, Constable Copple, the lugubrious village policeman, the Yeomond family, with Celia and Clive Brown-Jenkins, Richard Cowes, Timon Anthony, Kost the trainer, Joseph Herring, the knife-and-boot boy, Miss Caddick and the undergardener, Malpas climbed up to the high diving-board.

Steadying himself by the back rail, he tested the spring of the board, then walked out to its extreme end, and gazed earnestly into the water.

‘I see him!' he shouted. ‘Flat on the bottom!'

At the same instant a cry from the sports field attracted attention, and Amaris Cowes came bursting out of the lower gate and ran towards the edge of the mere.

‘Sergeant,' she cried, coming up to the director of the operations, ‘you are to find the statue of the mermaid. It has been stolen from the sunk garden. My great-aunt is worried to death about it.'

‘One thing at a time, mam, one thing at a time, if
you
please,' said the sergeant testily. ‘We're looking for a body at present. We can't tackle more than one thing at a time.'

He looked up at Malpas, who was now seated on the end of the board with his legs dangling into space.

‘Throw them in, sir!' he cried.

Malpas pulled some pieces of white stone, residue of Great-aunt Puddequet's crazy paving in the sunk garden, from the knapsack he wore, and, taking careful aim, tossed them down into the water. Then he returned to earth, went into the bathing hut, where he was immediately joined by the trainer Kost, and in a very few moments they emerged, clad in bathing-costumes, and took up a position at a spot indicated by the sergeant.

‘There he is, sir,' said he. ‘Spot him? I saw him at once when you started chucking in the bricks.'

Malpas nodded, glanced at the trainer, and, at a given but, to the watchers, an imperceptible signal, the two magnificent swimmers dived into the icy waters. In a second or so, their heads rose above the surface.

‘Found the missing statue, I think,' grunted Malpas. He took a deep breath, and dived to the bottom again with a strong knife which the sergeant had handed to him.