P.S.—I shall be furious if you don’t come.
Jimmy pondered Mrs. Verdew’s note, trying to read between its lines. One thing was clear: she had fallen in love with him. Jimmy smiled at the ceiling. She wanted to see him again, so soon, so soon! Jimmy smiled once more. She couldn’t bear to wait an unnecessary day. How urgent women were! He smiled more indulgently. And, also, how exacting. Here was this cock-and-bull story, all about Rollo’s ‘undertaking’ which would give him, Jimmy, the chance of a lifetime ! And because she was so impatient she expected him to believe it! Luncheon, indeed! Dinner! How could they meet for dinner, when Rollo was to be back at Verdew that same evening? In her haste she had not even troubled to make her date credible. And then: ‘I shall be furious if you don’t come.’ What an argument! What confidence in her own powers did not that sentence imply! Let her be furious, then, as furious as she liked.
Her voice, just outside his door, interrupted his meditation. ‘Only a moment, Rollo, it will only take me a moment!’ And Rollo’s reply, spoken in a tone as urgent as hers, but louder: ‘I tell you there isn’t time: we shall miss the train.’ He seemed to hustle her away downstairs, poor Vera. She had really been kind to Jimmy, in spite of her preposterous claims on his affection. He was glad he would see her again to-morrow. . . . Verdew was so much nicer than London. . . . He began to doze.
On the way back from the woods there was a small low church with a square tower and two bells—the lower one both cracked and flat. You could see up into the belfry through the slats in the windows. Close by the church ran a stream, choked with green scum except where the cattle went down to drink, and crossed by a simple bridge of logs set side by side. Jimmy liked to stand on the bridge and listen to the unmelodious chime. No one heeded it, no one came to church, and it had gone sour and out of tune. It gave Jimmy an exquisite, slightly morbid sense of dereliction and decay, which he liked to savour in solitude; but this afternoon a rustic had got there first.
‘Good-day,’ he said.
‘Good-day,’ said Jimmy.
‘You’re from the castle, I’m thinking?’ the countryman surmised.
‘Yes.’
‘And how do you find Mr. Verdew?’
‘Which Mr. Verdew?’
‘Why, the squire, of course.’
‘I think he’s pretty well,’ said Jimmy.
‘Ah, he may appear to be so,’ the labourer observed; ‘but them as has eyes to see and ears to hear, knows different.’
‘Isn’t he a good landlord?’ asked Jimmy.
‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘He’s a tolerably good landlord. It isn’t that.’ He seemed to relish his mysteriousness.
‘You like Mr. Rollo Verdew better?’ suggested Jimmy.
‘I wouldn’t care to say that, sir. He’s a wild one, Mr. Rollo.’
‘Well, anyhow, Mr. Randolph Verdew isn’t wild.’
‘Don’t you be too sure, sir.’
‘I’ve never seen him so.’
‘There’s not many that have. And those that have—some won’t tell what they saw and some can’t.’
‘Why won’t they?’
‘Because it’s not their interest to.’
‘And why can’t the others?’
‘Because they’re dead.’
There was a pause.
‘How did they die?’ asked Jimmy.
‘That’s not for me to say,’ the old man answered, closing his mouth like a trap. But this gesture, as Jimmy had already learned, was only part of his conversational technique. In a moment he began again:
‘Did you ever hear of the Verdew murders?’
‘Something.’
‘Well, ‘twasn’t only dogs that was killed.’
‘I know.’
‘But they were all killed the same way.’
‘How?’
‘With a knife,’ said the old man. ‘Like pigs. From ear to ear,’ he added, making an explanatory gesture; ‘from ear to ear.’ His voice became reminiscent. ‘Tom Presland was a friend o’ mine. I seed him in the evening and he said, he says, “That blamed donkey weren’t worth a ten-pound fine.” And I said, “You’re lucky not to be in prison,” for in case you don’t know, sir, the Bench here don’t mind fellows being a bit hasty with their animals, although Mr. Verdew is the chairman. I felt nigh killing the beast myself sometimes, it was that obstinate. “But, Bill,” he says, “I don’t feel altogether comfortable when I remember what happened to Jack Didwell.” And sure enough he was found next morning in the ditch with his throat gapin’ all white at the edges, just like poor old Jack. And the donkey was a contrary beast, that had stood many a knock before, harder than the one what killed him.’
‘And why is Mr. Verdew suspected?’
‘Why, sir, the servants said he was in the castle all night and must have been, because the bridge was drawed. But how do they know he had to use the bridge? Anyhow, George Wiscombe swears he saw him going through Nape’s Spinney the night poor old Tom was done in. And Mr. Verdew has always been cruel fond of animals, that’s another reason.’
How easy it is, thought Jimmy, to lose one’s reputation in the country!
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘how does Mr. Verdew satisfy his conscience when he eats animals and chickens, and when he has slugs and snails killed in the garden?’
‘Ah, there you’ve hit it,’ said the old man, not at all nonplussed. ‘But they say Mr. Rollo Verdew has helped him to make a mighty great list of what may be killed and what mayn’t, according as it’s useful-like to human beings. And anybody kills anything, they persuade him it’s harmful and down it goes on the black list. And if he don’t see the thing done with his own eyes, or the chap isn’t hauled up before the Bench, he doesn’t take on about it. And in a week or less it’s all gone from his mind. Jack and Tom were both killed within a few days of what they’d done becoming known; so was the collie dog what was found here a fortnight back.’
‘Here?’ asked Jimmy.
‘Close by where you’re standing. Poor beast, it won’t chase those b——y cats no more. It was a mess. But, as I said, if what you’ve done’s a week old, you’re safe, in a manner of speaking.’
‘But why, if he’s really dangerous,’ said Jimmy, impressed in spite of himself by the old man’s tacit assumption of Randolph’s guilt, ‘doesn’t Mr. Rollo Verdew get him shut up?’ This simple question evoked the longest and most pregnant of his interlocutor’s pauses. Surely, thought Jimmy, it will produce a monstrous birth, something to make suspicion itself turn pale.
‘Now don’t you tell nothing of what I’m saying to you,’ said the old man at length. ‘But it’s my belief that Mr. Rollo don’t want his brother shut up; no, nor thought to be mad. And why? Because if people know he’s mad, and he goes and does another murder, they’ll just pop him in the lunatic asylum and all his money will go to government and charity. But if he does a murder like you or me might, and the circumstances are circumstantial, he’ll be hanged for it, and all the money and the castle and the coal-mine will go into the pockets of Mr. Rollo.’
‘I see,’ said Jimmy. ‘It sounds very simple.’
‘I’m not swearing there’s anything of the sort in Mr. Rollo’s mind,’ said the old man. ‘But that’s the way I should look at it if I was him. Now I must be getting along. Good-night, sir.’
‘Good-night.’
Of course it wasn’t really night, only tea-time, five o’clock; but he and his acquaintance would meet no more that day, so perhaps the man was right to say good-night. Jimmy’s thoughts, as he worked his way up the castle mound, were unclear and rather painful. He didn’t believe a tithe of what the old man said. It was not even a distortion of the truth; it was ignorant and vulgar slander, and had no relation to the truth except by a kind of contiguity. But it infected his mood and gave a disagreeable direction to his thoughts. He was lonely; Randolph had not appeared at lunch, and he missed Rollo, and even more he missed (though this surprised him) Rollo’s wife. He hadn’t seen much of them, but suddenly he felt the need of their company. But goodness knows where they are, thought Jimmy; I can’t even telephone to them. In the midst of these uneasy reflections he reached his bedroom door. Walking in, he could not for a moment understand why the place looked so strange. Then he realized; it was empty. All his things had been cleared out of it.