‘What?’
‘Artemis Orthia.’
‘Yes, he did. The sergeant’s shorthand is impeccable. If he wrote Artemis Orthia, then that’s what the fellow said. ’
‘I’ll tell Laura,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘You may find her less scrupulous this time.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
—«♦»—
‘After some time, however, the old fox really died; and soon afterwards a wolf came to pay his respects.’
Ibid. (Mrs. Fox)
« ^
Artemis Orthia?’ said Laura. ‘But wasn’t she made out of a tree? Well, I take it as a mark of favour on David Battle’s part that he should give me a warning of my impending demise!’
‘So, you see,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘we want to know why the ice-cart came here that day.’
‘Ice?’ said the old man with the wheelbarrow. ‘Oh, ah. Ice. I remember.’ He ruminated, pulling at a small clay pipe the colour of the soil. ‘Ice, says you. And proper, too. But it were them fillum folks ordered it. Wanted to make a picture of the North Pole explorers, or summat of that, so they tell me. Photography, like. The ice all throwed out in a pond they dug in the garden. Show ee? Ah, I’ll show ee. It were over there where they planted them bits of pine trees.’
‘And who stayed here besides the film people and Mr. Concaverty?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired. ‘Did you ever see anyone else?’
‘Why, no, I dunno as I did.’
‘No one else was a stranger to you except the film people?’
‘Nobody else, without it might be some of the indoor servants. But such as them ’aven’t time for the likes of me.’
‘So that’s that,’ said the Chief Constable briefly. ‘Now, what? Or shall we go to the cave? Is that old man in the plot?
‘I was right to forbid Laura to go to David Battle’s studio,’ said Mrs. Bradley, following her own train of thought. ‘Behold the fifth dead tree.’
She went back to the old man. He had finished his pipe and was contemplating it before knocking it out against the ancient brick wall of the culvert.
‘What killed the trees?’ she enquired.
‘Ah!’ said the old man, making up his mind, and knocking the pipe out carefully. ‘Got a hairpin, I wonder?’
Mrs. Bradley produced one from among her shining locks and handed it over.
‘You know who killed them, I suppose?’ she asked carelessly.
‘Me? Oh, I knows. None better. It were that there expert they brought down. “Got to ’ave ’em dead,” says Mr. Concaverty to me. “Wanted for the fillum,” he says. “Can you kill ’em?” he says. “I can kill moles and that old water-rat, and chickens and pigs, and an old turkey gobbler or two. That’s me,” I says. “But trees! Nobody don’t kill trees,” I says, “without they’re daft,” I says. “Now if ’twere only that there old water-rat,” I says…’
‘Yes, but what did this expert look like? And how did he kill them?’ enquired the Chief Constable brusquely. The old man looked at him with rheumy, intelligent, blue eyes.
‘He were biggish,’ he said. ‘Ay, he were biggish. And he killed ’em with turps and resin, and with burnin’ at the roots, and with brimstone from hell, and with curses. Ay, how he cursed them there trees!’
‘So you’ve come!’ said David Battle.
‘Yes,’ Laura agreed. ‘But only to arrange terms.’
‘Terms?’
‘Sure. If I’m to sit to you for some kind of anonymous classical work, I must receive pay.’
‘Pay?’
‘Don’t keep up this Echo on Parnassus stuff. What sort of mutt do you think I am? I have to earn my living, don’t forget.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘But me no buts. What are the odds?’
‘Odds?’
‘Oh, Lord!’
‘Now, look here,’ said Battle, putting down the charcoal he had picked up and coming over to her, ‘nothing was said about fees.’
‘I know. I’ve come to say something about them now. Your rake-off from those faked pictures must have been fairly considerable. Where do I come in?’
‘You little…!’ said Battle, looking dangerous.
Laura, who topped him by two and a half inches, and weighed considerably more than he did, resented the adjective considerably more than the noun.
‘Little nothing,’ she observed coldly. ‘And while we’re on the subject of emoluments, just what did they pay you for blotting out that wretched Firman?’
Battle went white, and Laura, accustomed to teasing her brothers, instinctively ducked. But he made no move to attack her. He turned away and said pettishly:
‘Don’t be a lout. You know perfectly well I don’t kill people.’
‘Still got to break your duck?’ said Laura pleasantly. ‘Well, that’s all right with me. If it comes to a toss up between us, I bet I’m as good as you are. Now, reverting to the main topic of conversation…’
‘Will five bob an hour do? I can’t afford more than that.’
‘Make it seven and six, and it’s a do.’
‘But… all right, then. There’s a screen over there. Get ready behind it, and then— ’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Laura. She had to pass the screen to reach the door, and gave it a hearty shove as she went by. Apart from the fact that, as she had supposed, there was someone concealed behind it, she learned nothing from this manœuvre, and did not stay to repair her knowledge. She tore down the stairs and went straight, to Cuchester police station. By the time the police got to the house, however, both David and the other bird had flown.
‘So now for the cave,’ said O’Hara. ‘You know, Laura, you ought to be throttled for going to Battle and risking your silly young life.’
‘So I shall be, when my young man comes here, and he’s due back any day now,’ said Laura with great contentment. ‘Mrs. Croc. created a bit—unusual with her—but I still say it was worth it. I intended to bust David Battle’s bona fides, and I did.’
‘His what?’ asked Gascoigne loftily. He also was very angry with Laura for placing herself in danger, a position reserved by rights for gods and men, and, apart from this lordly sally, had ignored her since their reunion.
‘Suspenders to you,’ said Laura vulgarly.
‘Laura,’ said Mrs. Bradley, later, ‘cannot forgive David Battle for having the same Christian name as her fiancé. It endeared him to her at first, and the reaction is all the more severe.’
Unaware of this acute reading of her subconscious mind, Laura sent an affectionate telegram to her beloved, and prepared herself for the cave.
The company, apart from policemen, was to consist of all the protagonists in the drama except for Denis, who had been requested to turn out for his Rugby football club against Richmond. This call of the wild could scarcely be ignored, so, regretfully, he had been obliged to leave his favourite aunt to her own devices for a while and shoulder the responsibilities of manhood.
The others, as Laura gleefully expressed it, were all in the swim, and the party went by car to Slepe Rock under the cover of the darkness and the protection of the police.
‘We shall depend upon you to identify these men, sir,’ said Inspector Fielding to O’Hara.
‘I’ll do that,’ the kingly youth responded. ‘The thing is, what are you going to charge ’em with? Those remains in the iron box haven’t been identified yet, and I don’t think my identification of the fellow who kidnapped poor Firman would be accepted.’
‘Well, sir,’ said the Inspector, ‘we are hoping to charge them with the murder of a Mr. and Mrs. Nankison, whose bodies have been identified.’
‘Never heard of ’em.’
‘Not by name, sir, perhaps. Since we got to know of the goings-on in this cave, we’ve been doing a bit of investigating, and the conclusion we’ve come to is that drowned persons— you may recollect hearing that the first owners of Slepe Cottage, as it was then called, were lost in a yachting accident —might possibly get washed up in a cave or almost anywhere, but what doesn’t happen to them, strange to say, is that they get themselves nicely buried there, with a couple of limestone boulders to keep them down.’