Dead or Alive (13 page)

“You think—”

“I think O'Hara got on to something. He was a fool to try and work alone. He wouldn't have a chance against that crowd. They got him.”

“And the packet?”

“There may be something useful there—it looks like it. Get Mrs O'Hara going, and keep her going until we can get hold of it. It's up to you. And don't swallow any of that tripe about O'Hara's being alive. If he ran his head into that hornets' nest he was as good as dead before he started.”

Bill got up to go, but when he was nearly at the door Garratt called him back.

“About that Delorne girl—”

Bill turned round.

“Yes?”

“I've had a report about her. Not much in it. Not so young as she was. The sort of actress that don't act—hangs around the theatrical agents once in a while. Comes and goes a good bit. Said to have been abroad. Was in a Pierrot show at Blackpool for a few days in August—had a row and walked out. That's the only professional engagement there's any evidence of. There's always a man in tow. Small flat in Oleander Mansions—she's had it for about fifteen months, but more often away than not. No maid—daily woman when she's there—respectable person who works for several people in the block. Someone's been put on to sound her about O'Hara.” Garratt made a grimace. “The char may remember him—Della probably won't by now. I suppose you wouldn't like to try your luck with her?”

Bill smiled pleasantly.

“More in your line, Garratt,” he said, and made haste to be gone before the storm broke.

XIV

Meg went down to Ledstow that same afternoon. She sent a wire and caught a train, refusing Bill's offer to drive her down. She was, in fact, running away—from Bill, from the telephone to which bank managers called you, and from the flat of which someone else had a key. If Bill went on coming to see her and being a perfect lamb, she would end by crying on his shoulder, and then things would become impossible. If she had simply got to make a fool of herself and weep on anybody's shoulder, it would be much safer for it to be Uncle Henry's—much, much safer. She didn't want to go to Ledstow, but Ledstow would be safe.

She got to Ledstow in the dusk of a windy evening, and long before she arrived there she was regretting Bill and the proffered car. First there was the change at Ledlington, and three quarters of an hour to wait for the local train to Brant. At Brant there was another change, and a twenty minutes' wait, after which an even slower and more local train conveyed her and two other passengers to Deeping, which was still three and a half miles from Ledstow. There was said to be a bus, so Meg waited for it. As Ledstow was only seven miles from Ledlington, she had begun to wish that she had given the trains a miss and walked, only she had a trunk and a hat-box, and you can't walk seven miles with a trunk and a hat-box.

When the bus came it was very doubtful indeed about the trunk, but in the end they permitted it to be balanced precariously upon the wide step, where Meg and the conductor had to steady it all the way to Ledstow.

The bus stopped at the Green Man. The problem of transport had once more to be wrestled with. The landlord's wife, a large solidly built woman with a high colour and a hard eye, suggested William and the wheelbarrow, whereupon William was produced from the garden, a lanky hobbledehoy in a bright blue pull-over which made his red hair look exactly like a newly scraped carrot.

There was an argument about the wheelbarrow, which was full of pig manure—William, covered with blushes and freckles, being understood to say that when he was gardening he was gardening, and if they didn't want the ground dug, well, why didn't they say so and have done with it, and as for putting the lady's box in a-top of the manure, that wasn't no way to treat a box nor a barrow neither.

Everybody in the inn had by now gathered about Meg and her luggage—the landlord, Mr Higgins, the large square pendant to his large square wife; Miss Yeoman from the post-office and general shop next door who had come in for a word with Mrs Higgins, who was her sister; and an old woman with very thin white hair and a man's cloth cap who appeared to be William's grandmother. She had a high piping voice and was full of bright ideas.

“Tip the muck out on the marrer-bed.”

“What's the good of that, mother?” said the publican. “Marrers is over or next door to it.”

“Not until there's a frost they ain't,” said the old woman. “You tip it out like I say, William, and your mother'll give you a nice piece of newspaper to put in the barrer to keep the young lady's box from the muck.”

Miss Yeoman stood on the top step and looked refined. She wore tight stays, a long skirt, and a carefully controlled fringe. Her thin nose twitched with disapproval.

William disappeared sulkily, and as sulkily returned with a large wooden barrow which reeked of pig. It was the old woman who produced the newspaper, sheet upon sheet, mostly
News of the World
, and then superintended its disposal in the most efficient manner. Miss Yeoman tittered a little, the publican and William stacked the luggage, and Meg set off, walking beside the barrow, up the lane that skirted the churchyard.

They were stopped, as Bill had been stopped, by the locked gates. It really did seem the last straw after that interminable journey. When it appeared that they would have to wait whilst a message was sent up to the house, Meg could have wept with pure rage.

“Why do they keep the gates shut?” she said to William as they waited.

William blushed scarlet.

“I couldn't say, I'm sure.”

The waiting seemed endless. She tried to lure William into conversation.

“Are you fond of gardening?”

William flushed an even livelier scarlet and shook his head.

“Do they always keep these gates shut?”

“I couldn't say.”

“Do you know that boy who's gone up with the message?”

William shook his head. A tuft of his thick red hair fell over his eyes and he pushed it back again.

“Don't he and the old woman belong here?”

He shook his head again, and the hair once more came down into his eyes.

Meg gave it up. She had never seen a boy who blushed so easily or who had so many freckles. Even his ears and the back of his neck were scarlet.

It was getting darker every minute. She thought regretfully of the world she had once inhabited. In that world you didn't have to wait outside a locked gate while the gardenboy went up to the house and asked if you could come in. Neither did you arrive on foot with your luggage in a smelly wheelbarrow which had been used for carting pig manure. No, you drove in, and people were waiting to welcome you and give you tea. The thought of the hot tea of which there didn't seem to be any earthly chance was dreadfully unnerving. The dusk continued to fall, the gate-woman had gone back into her cottage, William blushed silently beside her, and the barrow smelled to heaven.

Someone came into view round the turn of the drive, and Meg's heart leapt up. It was a soft and affectionate heart, and the fact that Uncle Henry had taken the trouble to come down himself and let her in had an instant and uplifting effect. She felt that it was lambish of him—but then of course he really was a lamb, except when he completely forgot that you existed.

“The old gentleman's coming,” said William in an awed tone.

The figure that was advancing towards them could not even in the half light have been anyone except Henry Postlethwaite. The stooping figure with the slight limp, the broad black wide-awake, the ulster with its out-of-date shoulder-cape, were all as unmistakeable as they were characteristic.

As he came up to the gates, Meg saw the white beard straggling across the dark muffler. She remembered with a shock that he had grown a bread—Bill had said so. But what a horrid, untidy thing to do. She would have to try and get it off again.

Henry Postlethwaite came up to the gates and opened them with a key which he took out of the ulster pocket. He threw back the right-half leaf, and in a moment Meg had run into his arms.

“Darling, why are you all locked up like this? Is it a siege? And weren't you expecting me? Didn't my wire come, or did you forget to open it? I think it's time you had me back to look after you. Aren't you pleased to see me?” She kissed a small piece of cheek and a much larger piece of muffler.

Henry Postlethwaite patted her shoulder in the vague and amiable manner of one who feels that a demonstration of affection is expected of him and is anxious to do the right thing.

“Yes, yes—just so, my dear.” His voice, that very soft and gentle voice which had a trick of dying away in the middle of a sentence, now performed that trick. He seemed about to shut the gate, but Meg hung on his arm.

“There's William and my luggage, darling. Even if there is a siege, I must have my luggage. Come along in, William.”

“Yes, yes,” said the Professor.

The wheelbarrow appeared to surprise him. He stood aside to let it pass, and he and Meg then followed it up the overhung and gloomy drive. It was practically dark under the trees, but William seemed to know the way. The barrow squeaked along at a good pace, and Meg reflected that even in the pitch dark it would be possible to follow it by scent alone. She squeezed the Professor's arm through the folds of the ulster.

“Darling, you haven't told me why you're all locked up like this. Is it so as not to be interrupted?”

“Yes—yes—that was my reason for coming here—I told you.”

“I shouldn't think there was anyone here to interrupt. The book ought to get on like lightning.”

“Fairly well,” said Henry Postlethwaite—“fairly well—but I mustn't be interrupted.”

He was telling her that she mustn't interrupt. But he needn't tell her that. It hurt after all the years they had lived together. The feeling that she had had a long journey and no tea came over her again. She said quickly,

“Darling, you know I won't.”

He said, “No—no,” but not as if he really meant it.

Her hand fell from his arm. He had been shutting her out ever since she married Robin O'Hara, but somehow she had thought it was going to be different now. He had asked her to come, and she had thought it would be like going back into the old times. But you can't do that—you can't go back.

They came out from under the trees, and she saw the black glimmer of the lake, and the house on the far side of it with a bright shining window uncurtained right in the middle of its dark rectangle. She could just make out the shape of the island against the water. There was no light upon it. And as she looked, the lighted window in the house shut like a closing eye. Someone had pulled down a blind, and the even dark was over all.

They skirted the lake in silence and slowly. Henry Postlethwaite had never been active. He had been lame for years, but she thought his limp more pronounced and dragging than it used to be. She would have liked to say something, to ask him how he was, but she felt that he was far away and out of reach. A wave of homesick longing for Bill came over Meg. There was nothing new about Uncle Henry's going off into his own thoughts, but just now, just tonight, it did give you the most dreadfully isolated sort of feeling. A depressing sentiment from Matthew Arnold came into her mind:

“Yes, in the sea of life enisled,

We mortal millions dwell apart.”

One of the gloomier classics. It finished on a really cheery note with the assertion that:

“A god, a god our severance ruled

And bade between our shores to be

And unplumbed salt estranging sea.”

The tears stung sharply in her eyes. What a fool she was to think about Bill. He wasn't here, and that was an end of it. She had come here to get away from him, so what was the good of wishing he was here? The more she wanted him, the more it proved that she had been right to run away. If Robin was alive, there could be nothing but that unplumbed salt estranging sea between her and Bill. The tears stung again. What on earth had made her think of that mouldy poem? She supposed it was the island, and that horrid lapping water, and the new desperate feeling that she must, must,
must
go back to town. No, not town—Bill.… She had retreated as far into her thoughts as Henry Postlethwaite had into his. Neither of them spoke a single word until they reached the house.

Henry Postlethwaite walked straight in. There was a man-servant in the hall. He spoke to him as he passed, and went on and away out of sight.

The man-servant came forward—a nondescript middle-aged person in a grey house-coat. His manners were so correct that William and the pig-barrow did not ruffle them in the least. He had the luggage brought in, told William to wait, and after showing Meg into the room where Bill had interviewed Miss Cannock he returned to see William and the barrow down the drive and lock the gates after them.

XV

Meg was left in the strange room which contained all the familiar furnishings of her own room at Way's End. Somehow this seemed to make it all the stranger. One thing was a relief at any rate—the house, remote and isolated though it might be, was fitted with electric light. She had expected the dimmer kind of oil lamp, and was truly grateful.

She sat down in her own favourite chair and waited for something to happen. Uncle Henry had vanished into the blue, which was, of course, only what one might expect. He had probably already forgotten that she was here. The man would doubtless come back when he had locked the gates after William. But where was Evans—and Mrs Evans? She hadn't heard a word about their having left, and yet if either of them had been in the house when Bill came down, they would have made a point of seeing him. Mrs Evans had always had the softest of soft spots for Bill, and it just wasn't conceivable that either of them would allow
her
to arrive and be received by a stranger. Perhaps they were away on a holiday and the man in the grey coat was a stopgap. It simply wasn't conceivable that they should have left Uncle Henry after—how long was it?—twenty years.… Unless they had kicked at coming to this horrible gloomy place.… “But they wouldn't leave Uncle Henry—they wouldn't,” said Meg with a quick rush of conviction. “They
wouldn't
.”