Dead or Alive (8 page)

Garratt snapped out a single word—“Why?”

“Well, I was about here”—it was Bill's turn to put a finger on the map—“when I began to think someone was trailing me, and the minute I began to think about it I felt pretty sure I'd been hearing him behind me all the time.”

“And the footstep came after you through the alley into the row, and then fired a pistol at you point blank and missed you clean? You weren't drunk, I suppose?” Garratt's tone was in the last degree offensive.

“I was not—I hadn't even taken a drink. And you've got it all wrong. He didn't miss me clean—he took the skin of the top of my ear, and I walked home bleeding like a pig.”

Garratt cast an unsympathetic eye upon the wound.

“The fellow must be a damn bad shot. Sure you didn't cut yourself shaving?”

Bill Coverdale straightened up and went back to the hearth.

“Have it your own way,” he said. “I thought I'd just tell you—that's all.”

Garratt glared at the map for a moment, and then gave it a shove which sent it off on to the floor.

“Any idea who it could have been?” he said.

“None.”

“No one with a grudge against you?”

Bill shook his head.

“Not that sort of grudge.”

“You didn't get into a mess in Chile?”

Bill laughed.

“No good trying to drag Chile in.”

Garratt walked round the table, picked up the map, folded it with a ruthless disregard for the way in which it was meant to be folded, and banged it down upon his blotting-pad. Then he came over to Bill and prodded him in the chest with a nubbly forefinger which felt exactly like a piece of an iron gas-pipe.

“Who was it? Who do you think it was? You were thinking of someone when you were telling me. Who was it?”

Bill made a slight movement of the shoulders which could not have been called a shrug.

“I thought about O'Hara, but it couldn't have been O'Hara.”

“O'Hara
?” said Garratt explosively. “Damned nonsense!” He went over to where he had left the map, took it across to a book-case at the far side of the room, and jammed it in between a
Who's Who
and a
Burke's Peerage
. Then he looked over his shoulder with a scowl and said sharply, “
Damned
nonsense! O'Hara's dead!”

IX

Bill had a day before him. When he had interviewed Garratt he walked round to the dealer from whom he was getting a car, paid for it, collected it, and drove away. He drove to Ledlington, and having in mind that the car was not yet run in, he did not allow himself to exceed thirty-five miles an hour, though he would have liked to have gone a great deal faster. He wanted to see Henry Postlethwaite with the least possible delay, and he wanted to see him before he saw Meg again. Owing to the rather emotional turn which the evening had taken, the Professor had faded into the background. Meg had been too much startled by her encounter with Della Delorne, and too much upset by his questions, to remember that he was going down to see her uncle today. If she had remembered, she would have tried to cramp his style. He knew his Meg, and she would certainly have tried to make him promise not to worry Uncle Henry, not to tell him that she hadn't got any money, and above all things not to suggest that it was his business to provide her with some—all of which things Bill had every intention of doing. He was fond of the Professor, and he meant to be kind, but he also meant to be firm, and he was quite definitely of the opinion that his immediate job in life was to see that the Professor did worry about Meg. It was therefore going to save a lot of wear and tear if he kept out of her way until after he had seen her uncle.

It was a very nice morning for a drive—blue sky, rippled over with small fleecy clouds, some wind, and a sun so warm as to seem more like June than October. There had been rain overnight, and bright drops still beaded the brambles on the shady side of the hedgerow here and there—a wonderful blackberry crop, and the thorn trees loaded down with crimson haws.

He lunched in Ledlington, parking his car in the Square watched over by the statue of Sir Albert Dawnish, whose Quick Cash Stores, now so beneficently universal, had their origin in a humble establishment not twenty yards from this very spot. Ledlington is justly proud of her great man. She has set him aloft in the rigid trousers and all the other distressing garments peculiar to statuary in these islands.

After lunch Bill drove out to Ledstow. The road first crossed an open heath and then, coming on to a lower level, wound amongst trees. Ledstow village consists of a church, a public house, a row of petrol-pumps, and a single street of cottages varying from the timbered Elizabethan hovel to the converted railway-carriage of the post-war period. They all appeared to be equally unsanitary, but alas not equally picturesque. The village pond, thickly blanketed with green slime, gave out an archaic odour which seemed to be holding its own against the twentieth-century smell of petrol. The church, ancient and beautiful, was surrounded by a very large, damp graveyard set about with yews.

On inquiry Bill discovered that Ledstow Place, the property recently bought by Henry Postlethwaite, was known locally as The Place without any further qualification. It was about a quarter of a mile from the village, and was approached by a dark lane which turned at right angles by the pond and skirted the churchyard, the farther end of which marched with its boundary wall. There was a wall all round it—a very sizeable wall.

Bill came to a locked gate, with a lodge beyond it crouching amongst evergreens. He had to sound his horn half a dozen times before anyone came, and then it was an old woman, very slow and deaf, who looked through the gate and asked him his business. He began to think he ought to have wired to say he was coming. He produced a card, passed it through the bars, and shouted,

“I want to see Mr Postlethwaite! I'm an old friend!”

“He don't live here,” said the old woman, shaking her head.

“Who doesn't?” said Bill at the top of his voice.

“There's never been any Smiths here that I know of,” said the old woman.

“Postlethwaite,” said Bill—“not Smith! Professor Postlethwaite!”

“Not that I ever heard tell about,” said the old woman dolefully.

It occurred to Bill bitterly that from the point of view of complete security from interruption the Professor had certainly found an ideal retreat, but if anyone thought he, Bill, had come down here just for the pleasure of going away again, they were badly mistaken. He printed the name Postlethwaite on the back of another card, and was rewarded by a fleeting gleam of intelligence.

“Then why did you go asking after Smiths?” said the old woman crossly. “Never none here so far as I know of, and you can't get from it.”

“
Post
lethwaite,” said Bill with fearful intensity.

The old woman shook her head.

“He don't see no one except by appointment. Very busy gentleman, Mr Postlethwaite.”

He certainly ought to have wired, but he had had the oddest, most insistent desire to arrive without warning.

He produced a third card, and wrote on it under his name—“Just back from Chile. Very anxious to see you. Bill.”

Five shillings accompanied this through the bars.

“I want to see Mr Postlethwaite. Can you send this up to the house?”

The old woman pocketed the money, read the card with interest, and lifted up her voice in an eldritch scream.

“John-
ee!
”

Round the corner of the lodge there came a slouching lout of eighteen or so. From the state of his boots and hands, he had been digging. He took the card between a grimy thumb and forefinger and set off up the drive at a very leisurely pace. The old woman went back into the lodge.

Bill looked about him. He thought the Professor had taken on a white elephant. The place seemed very large, overgrown, and neglected. The drive had certainly not been gravelled since the war, and there was twenty years of unpruned growth on the shrubs and evergreens which darkened it. The property had probably gone for a song, but it would cost a lot to put it in order. Of course the Professor wouldn't bother. Very likely the lout was all the gardener there was. He was very glad that he had not brought Meg down with him. He had thought of it, but he had wanted a free hand with Henry Postlethwaite. He would have hated it for Meg to sit and wait at her uncle's gate as he was waiting now. It didn't matter for him, but he would have hated it for Meg. There was something depressing about this mouldering old place.

The best of the day was over, though it was not much after half past two. The small fleecy clouds of the morning had spread into an even grey. There was a palpable damp in the air, and a chilly wind which rustled the yellowing leaves of the horse-chestnuts on the other side of the wall. The fruit was falling early because of the drought. Lord—what a melancholy place for old Postlethwaite to bury himself in! He thought of Way's End with its beautiful Georgian front looking, at a dignified distance, upon the village street.… Oh well, the Professor had wanted quiet, and he had got it with a vengeance.

The lout came down the drive, and disappeared round the lodge without taking the slightest notice of Bill.

Bill sounded his horn.

Nothing happened. No one came. Three chestnuts dropped.

He sounded it again, and went on sounding it.

Presently the old woman came slowly out with a key. She fitted it into the lock, and then stood back and said with sudden loudness, “You can go along up to the house.” After which she took two hands to turn the key and opened the gate only just far enough to let him through.

Garratt by this time would have been gibbering, but Bill was the fortunate possessor of a very equable temperament. He meant to see the Professor, and in pursuit of that aim he was prepared to exercise any amount of patience, perseverance, and push.

He walked up the untidy drive at a good swinging pace. It turned almost at once, so that he was out of sight of the lodge. There were weeds everywhere. The shrubbery on either side was choked with untended growth. Beech and chestnut sent out their branches so low across the drive that it would have been dangerous to come up it at night.

There was a second turn, and he came suddenly in sight of the lake. It was quite a considerable body of water, with a belt of woodland coming right to the edge on this side of it, whilst beyond on the farther side, flat down by the water, stood a square barrack of a house with the rough, unkempt grass-land of the park right up to the very walls. The water might have been beautiful, but the house was frankly hideous. There wasn't a tree anywhere near it. There was no attempt at a garden. There wasn't a creeper on its blank grey walls. It had rows of windows looking upon the lake. But its most noticeable feature was, of course, the bridge which ran out to the island.

Bill stood and looked at it. The island was perhaps fifty yards out—a medium-sized island, with a high stone wall all round it. The bridge pierced the wall, and at the shore end entered the house on the ground-floor level at the extreme right of the building. It was a covered bridge on wooden piles, solid, clumsy, and altogether a blot on the landscape.

He began to walk round the lake. The drive skirted it, rising a little and then dipping again, until in the end it landed him upon what had been a large gravel sweep with the front of the house looking down upon it. The gravel had disappeared under weeds and a sort of scumlike moss which was very slippery to walk on.

The house itself was not quite so ugly on this side, but it seemed desolate and uncared for. Some half dozen steps led up to the front door, and they looked as if they had not been cleaned for years. The bell was of the old-fashioned hanging type with a wrought-iron handle like a stirrup. Bill pulled it, and heard the wire squeak faintly in its slot. He had no means of knowing whether the bell had rung or not. In a place like this anything that could get out of order was almost certain to be out of order. Or if it rang, it would ring in some remote sepulchral kitchen where no one would hear it. The house had an extremely uninhabited look.

After a decent interval he rang again. Almost at once footsteps approached and the door was opened. An elderly man-servant stood there looking up at him from under bushy grey eyebrows. He looked up because he was of medium stature and Bill was on the large side. He had the harassed air that any servant might have had in a house so large and so unkempt. Bill looked past him and saw in the hall the familiar furnishings which he had known at Way's End—the carved and twisted Victorian chairs which went so oddly with the panelled oak chest and the great Flemish cupboard with its polished bosses in high relief. He wondered what had happened to Evans. He must have buttled for the Professor for at least twenty years, and it seemed odd that the cupboard, and the chairs, and the chest should be here and not old Evans. All this was in his mind as he said,

“I'm Mr Coverdale. I think Mr Postlethwaite is expecting me. I sent my card up.”

Without answering, the man held the door wide open, and when Bill had passed through and he had shut it again, he led the way to the back of the hall. A door stood open there, and Bill came into a small room which was familiar in everything except the outlook from its windows, which gave upon the lake. There were two of them, and they were framed in blue curtains which had hung in Meg's own little room at Way's End. Her old blue carpet was under his feet. Her mother's picture looked down at him with the eyes that were so like Meg's. The chairs in their faded chintz covers were the chairs in which he and Meg had been sitting when he asked her to marry him and she said no. The only things missing were her writing-table and herself.

He wondered why she had left her mother's picture behind her when she went to the flat. He was looking at it, when the door opened and a woman came in. He recognized her at once from Meg's description as Miss Wallace's successor—the white mouse—Miss Cannock. The description was apt enough—the forward stoop of the shoulders and poke of the head, the light greying hair done in some archaic fashion of a fringe frizzed low on the forehead under a hair-net, and fastened up behind in a knob from which faint clinging strands came down upon a bright blue collar and a batik scarf patterned in heliotrope, purple, and grey. It was not only the collar that was blue. The whole dress was of that eye-splitting shade known as royal. It made the sallow face about it a good deal more sallow than it need have been. The scarf, which was long and wide, kept slipping off and sliding down. Bill felt an extraordinary irritation. The woman couldn't help being plain, but she could help wearing clothes like this—and in Meg's room too, where that horrible blue shrieked at the curtains.