Dead or Alive (21 page)

Miss Cannock sighed again.

“I am afraid it is not at all cheerful for you down here. Mr Postlethwaite is at the most critical point of his book, and I am naturally much occupied with him.”

“You know,” said Meg, “he ought not to shut himself up like this—it's quite terribly bad for him. He always did try to do it, but we didn't let him. I tell you what, I'll go over and see if I can't drag him out for a walk this afternoon.”

The door opened and Miller came in. He removed the dish which had held the cutlets and placed a very small milk pudding in front of Miss Cannock, who seemed to be too much flustered to attend to it.

“Oh, Mrs O'Hara—indeed—I couldn't! Mr Postlethwaite can be quite severe, and his orders—his most stringent orders—are that no one should interrupt him when he is writing. Besides he locks himself in, you know, at the far end of the bridge, and though he has entrusted me with the key of the door on this side, it is on the distinct understanding that I do not let it out of my keeping.” Her fluttering, fidgeting hands picked up a tablespoon and a large fork. “And now may I give you a little of this pudding?” She peered at it short-sightedly. “Rice, I believe—yes, rice. And I fear that Mrs Miller has burnt it.”

Meg's back was up. If Uncle Henry was being fed on about half a cutlet and a scrape of burnt rice pudding, it was about time somebody did something about it. As a cook this Miller creature was a complete fraud. Remembering the Evanses, she boiled over.

“She's a very bad cook,” she said.

Miss Cannock handed her a portion of dry pudding surrounded by black skin.

“Oh, do you think so? Mr Postlethwaite has been quite satisfied with her, I believe—but this pudding does seem—”

“Uncle Henry doesn't notice,” said Meg. “But it's terribly bad for him. He'd much better get rid of these Millers and have the Evanses back. I can't think why he ever parted with them. I would never have let him if I'd been there. They looked after him so beautifully and understood all his ways, and Mrs Evans was the most melting cook.” Meg stopped abruptly because Miss Cannock, abandoning her pudding, was applying her handkerchief both to her nose and to the corners of her eyes with a hand which was shaking with emotion.

“It's very hard,” she said in a trembling voice. “I've done my best, and Mr Postlethwaite has been satisfied.” She paused, gulped, and dabbed with increasing vigour. “It's so easy to come down and—find fault. And this isn't London, and of course you have no idea of the difficulties of catering—so far away from the shops—and fish only twice a week unless you go into Ledlington specially—and of course I was engaged—as a secretary—and had no idea that I would—be hekl—responsible—for the housekeeping—for which I cannot feel that I have any aptitude—and which was never mentioned by Mr Postlethwaite when—he engaged me.”

Meg cursed herself for a fool. Why on earth hadn't she held her tongue? The Cannock bridling and fussing was bad enough, but the Cannock head over ears in a grievance and requiring consolation was worse—much worse. Her nose was growing steadily pinker and her sniffs more poignant. It took Meg a quarter of an hour to persuade her to stop dabbing her eyes and to eat her now horribly congealed pudding.

She escape as soon as she could to her own room. The whole question of Uncle Henry—his meals, his domestic staff, and when if ever Meg might expect him to emerge from the book sufficiently to become aware that she was a guest in his house, had been most effectually shelved. Meg felt as if she couldn't stay in the house another second. A secretary with a temper would have roused her own temper to give battle, but a weak, meek dreep of a secretary who oozed tears and went pink at the nose on the slightest provocation or without any provocation at all merely induced that frame of mind in which you hastily buy a ticket for China, or Peru, or Popocatapetl.

“What a place—what a woman—what weather!” she exclaimed to herself as she came out of the front door into a thin cold drizzle. A low mist brooded over the ground, all ready to turn into fog when the dusk came down. Now there probably wouldn't be any fog in Peru.

As she crossed the neglected gravel, she pleased herself with the. fancy that an aeroplane might at any moment come swooping down out of the low grey clouds. There would be plenty of room for it to land in the park, and she would get in and fly away, and never have to eat Mrs Miller's rice pudding, or console Miss Cannock again. The pilot was a little nebulous, and the destination anywhere in the world. It was a very pleasant fancy, and it would have been even pleasanter if she had not had the feeling that she might suddenly discover the pilot was Bill Coverdale—and of course that wouldn't do at all. For one thing he had just written her a perfect beast of a letter and he certainly wouldn't want to fly away with her to the ends of the earth, and for another even if he did want to she couldn't possibly fly with him. “Oh no, no, no!” said Meg, and woke up out of her day-dream to scold herself. But of course this was just the sort of place to make you go crazy and start talking to yourself.

She had turned to the right without much thought, and was now at the point where the drive, skirting the lake, rose a little above it and then dipped again. It was from this place that Bill Coverdale, looking towards the island, had seen a window suddenly break where the house looked over the wall that guarded it. Meg stopped as Bill had done, and looked across the water as he had looked. It was a natural vantage point from which the gaunt barrack of a house, the island, and the bridge which linked them were all very clear. The wall round the island house was so high that it could only just be seen—the roof and two small windows. But one of them was broken. It was funny that Meg should have thought of that, because at once she corrected the thought and told herself that the window was open. Not broken—open. And then she had to correct herself again, because if it was a sash window, half the frame would still be filled with glass. And it couldn't be a casement, because every casement window in the world opened outwards. And if it opened outwards, where was it? No, she had to come back to her odd first impression of a window broken and the glass stripped clear of the frame so that the house now peered at her over the wall and across the water with one bright eye and one blank one. It gave her a queer sort of feeling and one she didn't much like. It was horribly bad for Uncle Henry to shut himself up in that walled-in poke of a house, with the water right up to the walls and probably everything streaming with damp. Miss Cannock didn't look as if she would ever think of having anything aired, and as for the Millers, Meg placed no dependence on them. The house was dirty and ill-kept, the meals were deplorable, and as Uncle Henry never noticed anything, the house on the island was probably even worse. She made up her mind that, tears or no tears, she must insist on seeing him. Only if Miss Cannock wouldn't give up the key, what was she going to do about it?

“What a life!” said Meg, and went on walking down towards the gates.

She thought she would go into the village to buy some stamps. She wasn't going to answer Bill's horrid icy letter today, but perhaps tomorrow she would write him a few equally chilly lines, just to show that she didn't care. The post-office was the general shop next door to the pub. Perhaps she would see William digging manure into the pub garden. What a thrilling thought! All at once she wondered whether the post-office had a telephone. Of course she hadn't the slightest intention of ringing Bill up—not today anyway—but it would be rather nice to feel that she could do it if she wanted to.

She arrived at the gates, tried them as a matter of form, and found them locked. This was only what she had expected. She would have to get one of the Hendersons to open them for her. The lodge door being unprovided with either a bell or a knocker, she was obliged to rap on it with her knuckles. It was a very hard door. The chocolate paint was peeling off, the doorstep looked as if no one had cleaned it for years, and the windows which flanked it on either side were dirty and closely curtained. Meg knocked half a dozen times and then went round to the back. There was a strong smell of dustbins and a nasty litter of old newspapers, cabbage-stalks, potato peelings, and crusts of bread.

Mentally apostrophising Mrs Henderson as an old pig, Meg picked her way to the back door and banged upon it with her clenched fist. When she had banged half a dozen times she stopped to listen, and heard a slow, dragging footstep come down the stair. Presently the door swung in a little way and Mrs Henderson looked round it with a furtive air.

Meg said “Good afternoon,” and received no response, only that suspicious stare. She had a horrid undecided feeling between being angry and something else. The something else was being frightened, only she pushed it quickly into a dark cupboard and locked the door on it because it was too positively inane. How could she possibly be frightened when there wasn't anything to be frightened of?

She said quickly, “Oh, will you please unlock the gate? I'm going into the village.”

Mrs Henderson went on staring at her without opening the door any wider. She was very dirty and unkempt. After a considerable pause she said,

“I'm hard of hearing.”

Meg had to come nearer, and didn't like it.

“The gates are locked. I want to go into the village.”

Mrs Henderson nodded.

“They're always locked. That's orders.”

“But I want to go into the village.”

Mrs Henderson shook her head with its sparse untidy hair.

“I'm very hard of hearing.”

Meg spoke louder, and pointed.

“I want to go out. I want you to open the gates.”

Mrs Henderson shook her head again.

“Can't be done. They're to be kept locked—Mr Postlethwaite's orders.”

Meg said “Nonsense!” in a tone of brisk rage, and Mrs Henderson shut the door in her face.

She not only shut it, she shot the bolt inside. Meg heard the whingeing creak as it went home. Then she heard Mrs Henderson go upstairs again with the heel of a downtrodden slipper slapping on every step.

“
Well!
” said Meg, and boiled with righteous wrath.

There was nothing for it but to go away, and as quickly as possible Meg went. But that slammed and bolted door had changed her lukewarm feeling that she might as well go and buy some stamps in the village to a stubborn determination to get there at any cost. The cost would be to her clothes, since she would have to get over the wall, but she meant to do it, and once outside, and the stamps in her pocket, even Mrs Henderson could scarcely refuse to let her in again. Somewhere in the depths of her heart Meg was aware that a refusal wouldn't blight her very much. She would be able to bear with fortitude being locked out of Ledstow Place. But of course she wouldn't be locked out, and she hadn't even got over the wall yet. She worked her way along it on the left of the gates. There was a thick belt of shrubbery next to the drive, but between it and the wall there ran a sodden, neglected path slippery with clay and slimy with moss. There was therefore no hope of a tree with friendly branches to serve as a step-ladder. The wall was some eight feet high, built of brick with a small coping on the top, and it was in very good repair.

After about thirty yards the shrubbery stopped, and the path with it. In front of her now was the rough open park, with an occasional tree or clump of trees, and the wall running on, sheer, bare, and unclimbable. None of the trees were anywhere near it. Meg decided that her proud spirit would just have to bend to necessity, and that the stamps must wait for another day. There was, after all, no raging hurry. She hadn't meant to write to Bill till tomorrow anyhow.

She turned round and went back to the house. The drizzle was turning to rain, and there was no sense in getting wet—she hadn't enough clothes for that. She walked fast, and as she walked, she made up her mind to see Uncle Henry as soon as possible. She would have to insist on seeing him. It really wasn't Miss Cannock's place to make difficulties, and Meg was prepared to be extremely firm. Since he was at a critical point in his book, she wouldn't complain about Mrs Henderson's rudeness, but she must insist on his giving definite orders that she was to be let out whenever she chose. This sort of prison gate and eight-foot wall business was absolutely medieval. If he really wanted to be left alone with his Millers, and his Cannock, and his revoltingly rude Hendersons, he'd only got to say so, revive her suspended allowance, and press a cheque into her hand, and no one would depart more joyfully than his unwanted niece.

These meditations lasted her to the front door, which she found not quite open and not quite shut. She had given it a brisk bang when she started on her walk and it must have rebounded before the latch could click. She didn't bang it now. She wanted to get up to her room without encountering Miss Cannock, of whom she felt she had had a just sufficiency. She therefore closed the door very gently and went softly up the stairs. If the house was neglected, it was solid. Not a step creaked.

She reached her room and shut herself in.

XXII

Meg looked up from the book she was reading and glanced at her wrist-watch. If was five-and-twenty past four. She had drawn the curtains and switched on the light when she came in. Her chair was comfortable—it was her own old bedroom chair—and her book was one of those pleasant old-fashioned ones in which nothing very much happens, in a very pleasant old-fashioned way. She wondered if there was going to be any tea. She had a raging tea-urge, but one of the irritating things about life at Ledstow Place was that you never knew whether there was going to be tea or not. Some days there was, and some days there wasn't, and you never knew which it was going to be until it was half past four and the tea either arrived or didn't arrive. It was one of the things which filled Meg with a yearning to take the invaluable Millers by the scruff of their necks, knock their heads together with a good resounding bang, and give them the permanent push. It pleased her very much to dream of doing this, but it was a regretful pleasure, because she could see no immediate chance of making the dream come true.