She asked us in, conducted us to her boudoir—it used to be the padded cell when the house was a private asylum—and asked us to sit down. Then she shut the door and tip-toed to her chair, sat down, leaned forward, and said in an excited whisper:
“It’s done! The deed is done!”
“Oh, splendid,” I said, quite at sea, of course.
Daphne goggled a bit and looked nervously at me. I rose to it.
“Er—could you lend us a couple of deck-chairs for the fête, you know, on August Bank Holiday?” I said, and she replied most amicably.
“I’ll lend you three, if you won’t tell anybody. It’s Jackson, you know. You won’t tell, will you? Mr. Burt told me. I think it’s simply beautiful. Don’t tell!”
We said we wouldn’t, and I said I’d send the Scouts up with their troop-cart to collect the chairs. She was as good as her word, of course, and we netted three splendid chairs. That was the night Daphne kissed me, so it was rather a jolly evening, take it altogether, except for Bill’s adventures, although they ended quite happily, too, and acquired for us two new and almost invaluable helpers for the fête.
Old Coutts went out, apparently, while Daphne and I were at the Moat House, and he had not returned when we got back. I went into the study and did a bit of arithmetic in connection with the cocoanuts and refreshments, and Daphne sorted the prize list. Mrs. Coutts was champing about in the kitchen bossing the cook and the supper, William came in but went out again soon, and everything was jolly fine. At ten p.m. the telephone bell rang, and, when I answered, a frightfully hectic voice at the other end of the wire desired old Coutts’ immediate presence at the Bungalow, Saltmarsh Stone Quarries. Coutts being unavailable, I slid along, of course, shoving a Prayer Book into my pocket. I concluded, from the agitation indicated by the voice—a woman’s, by the way—that one of the queer household up at the stone quarries had tumbled down one of the holes—rottenly badly fenced, those quarries. Fences were broken down by some toughs one year, and have never been repaired, of course, except on the east side, where nobody ever goes! A chap called Burt lived at the Bungalow—big, hefty bloke. More about him later.
It took me a good forty minutes to do the mile and a half from the vicarage to the Bungalow. It was uphill nearly all the way, and the foulest, rockiest, ruttiest sheep-track of a road imaginable, once one had left the main road. The track mounted a shoulder of the coastal range of hills in the sides of which the quarries were cut, and the slope on the opposite side descended through bracken and gorse and heather to the sea. The cliffs were low and sandy, and there was nothing much to see or to do when one reached the shore except to bathe or to sit on the stretch of sand or to explore Saltmarsh Cove, a smallish, uninteresting little cave. Why on earth anybody in their senses had ever built the Bungalow in its lonely, exposed position was one of the things which I thought I should never understand. I did understand it in the end, of course.
There was a light in the hall, and a light in one of the rooms when I arrived. Just as I was about to knock on the door I heard a scraping sound on the roof, but thought it must be the Bungalow cat. Then I banged at the door and was almost shot on to my face by having the knocker suddenly wrenched from my grasp by some muscular blighter tugging the door open with such force that I tumbled over the step and cascaded down the polished linoleum of the passage. Before I could apologise for hurtling in upon the household, the door was slammed behind me, and a voice, male, said, “It’s young Wells.” A second voice, William Coutts’, exclaimed, “It’s Noel!” And a third voice, female, the same which had squealed over the wire at me some forty-two minutes earlier, exclaimed, “Thank goodness, someone’s come for you, ducky!”
I was conducted into the lighted room, and, at intervals during the next hour, some of which was spent at the Bungalow, and some on conducting William back to the vicarage, I heard a somewhat weird story from the boy. William, although in some ways the most placid kid I know, does somehow contrive to get himself mixed up in any excitement that is going on. Even when his prep. school caught fire, William was the only kid out of the whole ninety-odd who had to jump out of an upstair window on to the sheet held out below. Old Coutts had to take him away soon after that, because he was always getting into trouble for scrapping with kids who tried to rub his nose in the dirt for him. Old Coutts admires a scrapper, and wrote a strongish letter to the headmaster for punishing William, and then removed the kid and sent him to Yeominster.
Considering that William had only achieved the distinction of leaping into space because he was in process of regaining admission to the building by night after having been out in the orchard sneaking the head beak’s apples, I thought, personally, that old Coutts’ letter was a bit thick. Still, it was no business of mine, of course.
CHAPTER II
maggots at the moat house and bats at the bungalow
« ^ »
William Coutts’ adventures began when the Scouts took their troop cart up to the Moat House on that same Wednesday evening to collect Mrs. Gatty’s three deck chairs for the fête. Mrs. Gatty is fond of boys, and she invited the Scouts into the dining-room and fed them with cake and home-made ginger-beer and home-made treacle toffee. Then, while the rest of them returned with the chairs, William, as Patrol Leader, politely offered to stay and wash up all the plates and glasses. Mrs. Gatty was rather bucked with the offer, because, of course, the maid was out and the cook was in the middle of dinner. It was about seven o’clock or perhaps half-past seven, and still daylight, although the weather, for the end of July, was fearfully unseasonable. In fact, I can’t remember a wetter or more depressing summer. Our one hope was that the Bank Holiday Monday would be fine.
William returned to the vicarage in a state of great excitement. This was unusual, for, as I say he was one of those biggish, hefty, good-humoured, practical-minded kids who are always on good terms with everyone and never get seriously ragged even at school, except in the incident last recounted, so to speak. That was an exception. His nature was placid, and he was inclined to accept things as they came without annoyance, question or perturbation. Thus, when he burst in on Daphne and me with the air of one who has discovered the Gunpowder Plot, I was somewhat astonished. But I couldn’t take him seriously. He told me that Mr. Gatty had been murdered. Daphne was scared, so I rose to it.
“Sez you!” I observed, ruthlessly.
“No,” said William. “I had it from Mrs. Gatty herself while we were washing up. She says the deed is done, and that she wanted to tell you and Daphne, only you didn’t seem interested in anything but deck-chairs.”
I frowned and lent the theme a little concentrated thought. Those were the words she had used to Daphne and myself in connection with her husband, but one takes it for granted that with anyone of Mrs. Gatty’s singular mentality a few odd remarks are in character and need not be regarded with the same amount of close attention that they would excite if they were uttered by some more normal person. On the other hand, those particular words, “The deed is done,” do sound a trifle sinister, even when uttered by somebody short-circuited in the brain line. I questioned William closely, but could not shake his evidence. He was going to Constable Brown, our village keeper of the peace, he said, to place matters before him. I was struck quite suddenly with a better idea. Anything, of course, to get rid of William, so that we could be on our own, but not, I thought, the Robert, who is unquestionably wooden-headed, although a jolly good chap.
“Listen, William,” I said. “There’s an old lady called Mrs. Something Bradley, or Mrs. Bradley Something—I forget which—staying with Sir William Kingston-Fox at the Manor House. She’s one of those psychology whales. Take her along to see Mrs. Gatty to-morrow morning. She’ll turn her inside and out, and find what the trouble is. Believe me, it won’t be a case for the police.”