There May Be Danger (30 page)

As stage-manager and general factotum of a small repertory company, Kate was more accustomed to drying other people's happy or despondent tears than to shedding them herself. It was an agreeable sensation, for once, to be the object of somebody else's tender consolations.

“Old Gid's decided to forgive you,” said Aminta to Colin. “He says he won't have archaeologists crawling about under his house, but he doesn't mind rat-catchers, that's only plain common-sense!”

Colin laughed. They were on their way to Sunnybank, where Sidney, already getting restless in the part of petted invalid, had prevailed on Mrs. Howells to let him come downstairs to tea and see some company. Kate was carrying Sidney's net, which she had been over to the Veault to retrieve from the police. Aminta had a small basket of duck eggs, for which Sidney's returning appetite had shown a wistful yearning, and Colin, who had just come back from London where he had been to interview an official at the Home Office, was carrying a partridge in a paper bag, an offering from Davis Pentrewer.

“Does Gid realise how he let Morrison exploit him, though?” asked Colin. “If your Gid hadn't hated archaeologists, Morrison would never have been able to clear out that bolt-hole for himself in the secret passage! Atkins himself could be trusted from the beginning not to make awkward investigations at his end of the passage. And by the time Morrison had finished working him up against archaeologists, he could be trusted to prevent anybody else investigating, either! So Morrison and his friends could clear a way from their end, and loosen the grating at the Llanhalo end, at their leisure, relying on our friend Atkins and his hatred of archaeologists to protect them from interference.”

“That's not how
he
looks at it, I can tell you! He says he always knew archaeologists were a fishy lot and now everybody else knows it too.”

“Don't tell him, but I thought he was the fishy one,” said Kate. “I thought all that fuss about hating archaeologists and not letting anybody go into the cellar was very fishy indeed. I also thought he was in league with Major Humphries.”

“Good Lord, Kate, if there's anything Gid hates worse than archaeologists, it's fox hunters.”

“I know. But I thought, you see, that that was rather fishy, too. And they were both such character-parts! I suppose,” added Kate, “it was the man called then, who stuck that piece of green tinfoil on to the door of Major Humphries car that afternoon. He'd just been quarrelling with Humphries, and no doubt it appealed to his sense of humour to send me off on that particular false scent. I suppose he took it off the door at Hymns Bank that night—I gave myself away rather when I saw it, and he must have realised what had startled me.”

“Was it Sidney who stuck it there?”

“Yes. He says that when he realised the danger, and that they weren't going to let him go, he wanted to write something on a piece of paper and drop it, in the hope somebody would be able to track him. But he hadn't a pencil, and this piece of sticky toffee-paper in his pocket, was all he could think of. And that reminds me, Colin, I've been wondering all the time you've been away, what made you follow me to Llanhalo that night?
I
didn't leave even a bit of tinfoil for anybody to track me by!”

“Well, Kate, you remember Gwyn Lupton invited me down that night to see the putty mould he'd taken of the silver penny of Ceowulf?”

“Yes, and a Bible with pictures in it, and a thorn tree root not quite in the shape of a weasel.”

“It was the silver penny of Ceowulf that put me on the track. I'd planned to go up to Hymns Bank late that night, so I had plenty of time to fill in, and I went to Gwyn Lupton's as late as I dared without risking finding him in bed. He'd just taken his boots off when I arrived, but was very pleased to see me, as Mrs. Gwyn had retired to bed early in a depressed state, with tooth-ache, and Gwyn, as he put it, ‘felt the need to listen to the voice of a friend.' I needn't tell you it was 1 who did most of the listening! We sat by the fire and drank homebrewed cider out of a cask Gwyn had behind the door, and he discoursed about all sorts of things, and finally showed me his collection of curios. It was housed for safety under one of those enormous old-fashioned cheese-covers, which was a bit of a curio itself, according to Gwyn, having belonged once to Miss Gilliam's great-aunt at the Cefn, who used it in the old days for blanching rhubarb. Well, the little illustrated Bible, and the thorn-tree root, almost, but not quite, in the shape of a weasel, about fulfilled my expectations. But the putty mould didn't.”

“Wasn't it clear?”

“Oh, as clear as the coin it was taken from, no doubt, which isn't saying much. But it just wasn't the mould of a silver penny of Ceowulf. It wasn't the mould of a Saxon coin at all. It was the mould of an English florin of William the Fourth, much defaced and corroded.

“Oh, poor, poor Gwyn!”

Colin protested:

“Poor Gwyn, indeed! Why poor Gwyn? He'd had five pounds given him for what was only worth the melting price of the silver! Lucky Gwyn! It puzzled me awfully, though. Morrison must have known perfectly well what the coin was. Why did he give Lupton five pounds for it? He couldn't possibly have wanted the coin. And what on earth made him tell you it was a silver penny of Ceowulf? I couldn't see any sense in it. Gwyn Lupton was obviously as pleased as Punch with his treasure and his acumen in taking it to the antiquary gentleman at the Veault,
he
had no doubt of its value. Well, I had a fairly long seance with Gwyn, who treated me once again to his views on the folly and wickedness of digging in tumuli, and afterwards I went up to Hymns Bank, where I had to wait about in hiding for a long time before our friend turned up. I think it was to be the last night at Hymns Bank, by the way, Kate. He was packing up and clearing everything away. Obviously your visit the night before had shaken their confidence in the isolation of Hymns Bank, and they weren't going to risk using that post any more. When I'd seen enough, I went back to Pentrewer. The matter of Gwyn Lupton's coin had gone right out of my head, but when I got back and saw the tumulus, I remembered it again. What the dickens was Morrison's game with that coin, I kept asking myself. It was only a little puzzle, but it nagged at me, somehow. What had buying this absurd coin to do with the treason going on at the Veault?
Had
it anything to do with it? What on earth made Morrison, who knew a reasonable amount about such things, first pay five pounds for an utterly worthless old coin, and then invent a yarn for your benefit about it being a silver penny of Ceowulf? Well, obviously, it seemed to me, he invented the yarn because he didn't want you to know that he had paid five pounds for a worthless coin. But why did he pay the five pounds?”

“Why, of course!” cried Kate, stopped by a sudden memory of her first meeting with Gwyn Lupton. “The skeleton in the cupboard!”

“I'd got back to Pentrewer, Mr. and Mrs. Davis had been in bed for hours, the fire was out, and I wanted a warm-up to think things over by. The kindling-wood's kept in the cupboard beside the fireplace. As I opened the cupboard door I remembered what you'd said about Gwyn Lupton being a carpenter and knowing all about the skeletons in the local cupboards. A carpenter, I thought, and a cupboard at the Veault with a skeleton in it. Something at the Veault that a carpenter who'd been working there might have discovered, and that Morrison might want kept quiet. Something in a cupboard, something behind a door or a wall, something secret, a secret storeroom—staircase-passage—Well, after all, there was supposed to be a secret passage at Llanhalo, not a quarter-of-a-mile away! Suppose there was a secret passage at the Veault, too—even the other end of the same passage? Suppose the inquisitive Gwyn Lupton in the course of his repairs at the Veault had come across something unusual in the structure of the house—a sliding panel, or a dropping stair, or a cavity in a wall? And suppose Morrison knew of this old secret place, and were using it for purposes of his own? Mightn't Morrison have shut Gwyn Lupton's mouth in the obvious way? I give you five pounds for your old coin, and live pounds each for as many more as you can find: you keep quiet about this tricky piece of carpentry in my house, there's a good chap: I don't want a lot of curious visitors disturbing us here, this is a creche, not a showplace: and anyway, it's only some old priest's hidey-hole, lots of old houses have them! I could easily imagine Morrison flattering Gwyn Lupton into silence and clinching the bargain by buying his corroded florin off him for some staggering sum. And then, of course, as soon as I thought of the Llanhalo passage, I thought of you, Kate.”

“Why of me?”

“I knew you'd made up your mind to look for the secret passage, and I knew my warning words hadn't made any impression on you. I hadn't worried much as long as I felt pretty sure there wasn't any secret passage to speak of—I thought you were in for an unpleasant scene with our friend Atkins, but nothing worse. But now that I was beginning to there
was
a secret passage, after all, and that it might lead straight into the arms of Morrison and Company—well, Katy, you can imagine my feelings!”

Kate said, all the more lightly because the seriousness of Colin's tone had touched her heart:

“Imagine mine when I had heard you turning the handle of the cellar door, and thought you were the enemy close on my heels! Ah, but it made up for it, Colin, when you suddenly materialised out of space beside me when I was struggling with Ellida! I was never so glad to see anyone in all my life, as I was to see Colin then! Unless it was to see
you
, Aminta, a little later on—the one person in the world who could be useful at that moment, the one person in the world who could be trusted not to ask questions and not to be surprised!”

Aminta protested:

“It's not much use asking questions when a person hisses ‘Don't speak!' at you as soon as you open your mouth. And I
was
a bit surprised, as a matter of fact, when Rosaleen suddenly came towards me flourishing a pistol.”

“But did she—”

“Yes. She whisked it away again as soon as she saw who I was. But I'd seen it. I thought then there must be
something
up,” said Aminta.

Kate turned and looked at her friend with a new respect.

“Do you mean to say that when you went through that piece with Rosaleen about wanting litter for a sick cow, and about Colin breaking into the cellar, you knew she'd got a pistol in her hand?”

“It was in her pocket, then,” said the literal-minded Aminta.

“And you didn't so much as stammer or flick an eyelash?”

“Why should I?”

“Aminta, I'd no idea you were such an actress!”

Aminta looked vague, as if she had no idea she was, either, and changed the subject, for it bored her to talk about herself.

“It was queer how I liked Rosaleen... You liked her, too, Kate.”

“Not queer at all.
She
was an actress, if you like! You liked the act she put on, you didn't like her.”

“I'm glad she was caught, anyway. I wonder what'll happen to her, Kate, and to Mrs. Morrison and Joe?”

It was Colin who answered gravely:

“I doubt if you'll know, for certain, until after the war is over. There may be a little paragraph in the papers—‘Three spies were executed in such and such a prison on such and such a date... But spies aren't tried in public in wartime.”

A little grim silence fell. Aminta broke it on a more practical note:

“Fancy having all those repairs done at the Veault, and all that decorating, all those workmen about for months putting in baths and lavatories and things, for children who all the time never existed!”

“The children existed all right,” said Colin, “though, of course, there was never any intention that they should exist at the Veault! But the Morrisons were actually in touch with the W.V.S. about real evacuee babies. They'd decided to paint themselves as rich American philanthropists, and they did it thoroughly and used the best paint. And remember, too, those builders and their repairs were very useful. They made a great excuse for delay.”

“Yes, where there's babies there has to be plumbing,” quoted Kate. “And if our dilatory English builders took a long while to put it in, so much the better, I suppose.”

“The Morrisons had calculated our dilatory builders, and their own dilatory orders, would hold up the plumbing until Hitler's troop-carrying planes landed on Radnor Forest, among other places,” said Colin. “By then, they calculated, evacuation schemes wouldn't be what they were and needn't trouble them! In fact, they expected to be busy before now evacuating themselves to wherever fifth-columnists could be most useful. But something went wrong with the programme, and the expected invasion was postponed. Its latest postponement, by the way, which was Rosaleen's and Joe's last forlorn hope, was until the day before yesterday.”

“I didn't notice anything then,” said Aminta. “Did you, Kate?”

“The day before yesterday passed quite peacefully in Hastry,” agreed Kate. “A telegram miles long from Sidney's great-aunt in London was our only excitement. She wired to explain that she couldn't possibly leave London at the moment, because Pixie—that's another of her precious cats—has followed Bobbie's example and run away from home, and she's distracted, and wants Sidney to return to London as soon as he's fit to travel. The wire was reply-paid, and Sidney wired back:
‘Staying here till Dad comes, good luck to Pixie'
: We haven't had an answer to that yet.”

“And I suppose, Kate,” said Colin, as they went up the steep steps of Mrs. Howells's front garden, “you feel an urgent call now to go back to London and look for the old lady's cats for her?”

“No, I
don't
!” protested Kate. “They're probably having the time of their lives in the wide open space-of Bayswater, posing as poor bombed cats on every charitable window-sill. I shan't be going back to London for a long while, I expect, Colin. I've got a job.”