The Beckoning Lady (20 page)

Mr. Campion advanced upon his wife and took her gently by the back of the neck.

“Helping?” he enquired.

“Justice must be served.” Amanda's cool voice was dangerously offhand. “I should cut along after Old Harry if I were you. I think you'll find they've got the weapon. What's all this about Tonker?”

“You heard it on the bell-bine, I suppose?” Mr. Campion murmured impolitely. “He's gone to London.”

“How do the police feel about that?”

He shrugged his shoulders but his eyes were worried. “It's not as ugly as it might be, or as it will be if the idiot doesn't telephone by three o'clock. They know they're at fault by not asking to see him at once. Anyhow, Wally has promised to stand over him and see he calls the police the moment he appears. But he may easily drift off to lunch before going to the office. You never know with Tonker.”

To his surprise she grinned. “I like old Tonker. He's got such a valuable sense of proportion. Oh by the way, you can take it that it was Old Harry who removed all the reading matter from the body. He didn't do it until he found out who the man was then he thought Miss Diane might be involved so he removed the evidence of identification in case—that's who that was.”

“Was it, by George? How's he going to justify that.”

“He isn't. Old Harry hears nothing, sees nothing, says
nothing. He's the proverbial cartload of monkeys. Those papers will never be heard of again. They weren't valuable and didn't mean much, and if you try to question Harry you'll not only never find out anything at all, but all your rabbits will die.”

“I see. Is it permitted to enquire how you know?”

“Oh,” said Amanda. “I was born here. I really should go along now, if I were you.”

“Why?”

A smile, singular both for its sweetness and its guile, flickered over the heart-shaped face.

“Because if you don't you may miss something rather good. I say, I hope you won't mind if Lugg and Rupert and I stay here and get on with our work. Honesty Bull will give you and Luke some lunch at The Gauntlett. It ought to be giblet pie.”

“Why ought to be?” he said.

“Because it's Midsummer's Eve, of course.” Amanda turned on her heel. “I tell you, to get on here you have to know the place.”

Mr. Campion crossed the drive, let himself through the white gate, and walked round the barn which smelled sweetly of tar in the morning sun. When he reached the lane he paused. A knot of men was standing on the dusty flint surface, looking at something on the bank under the hedge. Luke, South and the constable were waiting for the sergeant-photographer who had gone back in the police car for his gear. Of Old Harry there was no sign at all.

Luke beckoned Campion over. “Look at this,” he said. “The original not-so-blunt instrument. Same as Cain found out the original trick with. They tell me they leave these about all over the place.” His bright eyes in their triangular sockets opened wide. “No wonder we cockneys think the country dangerous.”

He pointed to a nest in the rank grass, where lay a ploughshare of the ancient pattern, very long in the shaft or cray, and broad in the wing. Using his handkerchief,
although there could be no hope of prints on the gnarled and rusty surface, South picked it up and turned it over.

“See that?” He pointed to a faintly darker stain on the broad bevel of the straight side of the iron. “This is it, all right. My chaps scoured the meadow as soon as it was light, but they didn't think of coming right out here in the lane.” He giggled. “Getting very close to the pretty house, isn't it?”

“Put there this mornin'.” A small elderly voice, rising from somewhere in the region of their knees, startled everybody. Old Harry had materialised among them and was bending close to the grassy nest. “Put there this mornin' while the dag was wet.” He straightened himself on the words, but remained a good head and a half shorter than Luke and South, who were both big men. He made the peculiarity greater by keeping very close to them, so that they had to look vertically down upon him while he lifted his shy, rosy face to them like a child.

“Crikey,” said Luke under his breath.

But South, who like all countrymen was not so unwise as to disregard the native, began to grin and sparkle again.

“That's what you think, is it, Dad?” he asked civilly enough and shot an enquiring glance at the constable, who had become as wooden as a soldier on parade.

“Harry Buller, sir. Old-age pensioner. Has worked round about 'ere all his life. Bird-catcher, sir.”

“Ain't much I don't know. I'm a very knowledgeable old man,” said Old Harry, very fairly as Mr. Campion thought.

The boast, however, delighted South, who was pleased with himself and in kindly mood.

“How d'you know it was put there this morning, chum?”

Luke brought a city intelligence to bear. “Did you put it there?”

“No no. I see you a-lookin' so I looked, and I see dags under it.”

“Dags—doo,” said South. “Doo of the morning. Like
rain, but it ain't,” he explained. “I see what you mean, Dad. You don't think it's been there long?”

“No no, grass'd be yellow.” Old Harry appeared to become very excited and he made a curious high-pitched trumpeting sound, scarcely recognisable as words. “Yelleranwhoitanoddmedods, yelleranwhoitanoddmedods, yelleranwhoitanoddmedods.”

Since everyone else was defeated, the constable, who was sulky and the least bit nervous, was forced to translate.

“'E says that the grass would be yeller and white beneath the iron, and that there would be slugs, snails and other small vermin under it if it had lain there for any length of time, sir,” he said to Luke, adding mendaciously, “I was wondering along of that myself.”

Old Harry stretched up a hand which looked like part of a pollarded willow to South.

“Give I a holt of that, mate,” he commanded, and took the ploughshare, holding it carefully with a handkerchief. “I seen they do this here on the tellyvision,” he remarked with awful cunning. “But that little old tellyvision ain't never seen what I be a-goin' to do.” And very solemnly he smelled the iron all over like a dog.

It occurred to Mr. Campion, who was enjoying himself despite his anxiety, that townspeople betray a superstitious attitude towards the sense of smell. It was as though, he reflected, they realised they had lost a valuable asset and felt nervous about it. Certainly South was watching the old man with tremendous interest, while Luke was as dumbfounded as if confronted in fact by a talking hound.

“Har,” said Old Harry at last, a secret joy lighting up his apple face. “Har. Don't you notice nothin', sir?”

The Superintendent hesitated, but it was clear what was required of him and he took the share by the cray and sniffed at it deeply and noisily.

“I can't say I do,” he said at last, offering it to Luke, who declined it with a gesture. “What are you getting at, Dad?”

Old Harry took the weapon once more and repeated his truly remarkable performance.

“I'll take you where that's bin the last few days,” he volunteered. “That's lain in wormwood, that's been near rust, that's known Johnwort. And that's smelled the fire,” he added with sudden enthusiasm. “You gentlemen follow me.”

“You'll open your mouth too wide and you'll slip in of it.” The constable spoke involuntarily and the venom behind the statement showed far more clearly than he had intended. Both South and Luke turned slowly round and regarded him with cold appraisal. Fred South returned to Harry.

“Where is this place where all these things grow, old'un?” he demanded.

“You gennelmen come with me.”

“Not yet. Where is it? Where do you think the ploughshare has been?”

“Battus Dump. That's the place. ‘At's where the wormwood grow. Don't grow no other place, lest in the churchus, and there ain't no fire there. Battus Dump, Battus Dump, Battus Dump.” Old Harry was dancing a little in his excitement. It was a masterly little cameo, innocent pride, anxiousness to help, simple rusticity, were all knit together with the enthusiasm of a child with a chance to show off.

The wretched constable, unmasked by witchcraft, made a feeble effort to defend himself.

“'E's nothin' but a silly old man, sir,” he began. “'E—”

“I know all about that. But you told me that you'd just found this ploughshare lying here, and it's got dag—I mean doo, under it.”

The constable took a deep unhappy breath.

“Could I speak to you private, sir?” This time he had indeed come up against something.

South led him a yard or so down the lane and a soft but considerably animated conversation took place between
them, while the London man smiled tactfully at the toe of his boot and chatted to Mr. Campion about the weather, and the greenery, and how to him the whole place smelled of honey. Old Harry retired to the footpath's edge and looked earnestly at tracks which not even he could see. When South returned he was angry but triumphant, and the constable, lingering in the background, had a silly smile on his face and dumb misery in his eyes.

“I'm sorry for that, gentlemen.” South was laughing to himself, as usual, but not quite with his customary enthusiasm. “I think I've got the truth now. This silly juggins fell over something on the footpath in this next meadow on Tuesday night this week. He picked it up and carried it to the rubbish dump just outside the village. Yesterday he remembered it, and last night he went back and found it. Then, because the meadow had been searched yesterday, he had the bright idea of planting it here. As for you,” he went on, swinging round on the unsuspecting Harry, “you didn't smell anything. You saw the constable hunting for the share last night, and put two and two together.”

“That ain't right.” Old Harry spoke quietly and even calmly, but an expression of such scarifying malignity darted out of his innocent blue eyes that everybody was made slightly uncomfortable. “Oi don't think much to talk like that, mister,” the old man continued, using the fearful formula which is the East country's strongest protest. “Last night I was too drunk to see nothin', and just now I smelled that as powerfully as I smell you—Richardson's Violet Bear-cream, that's what you've got on your 'ead. 'Owever, seeing as 'ow you don't want no help, I'll bid you good-day.”

He plodded off through the gate, back to the meadow round the barn. There he glanced back.

“Sence you feel so 'appy alone, I 'ont show you where that old share has laid these fifteen or twenty years, as I've seen with my own eyes.”

They got him to come back with some difficulty.
Superintendent South, who had become self-conscious about his favourite and indeed only cosmetic, kept pulling his hat down closer over his head without realising what he was doing, and Luke, supremely tickled, but keeping well to leeward of the witness, set out behind him along the footpath to the stile and the bridge where Little Doom had come so quietly to rest.

Old Harry walked across the plank bridge, climbed the stile, and dropped down on his knees just beside the post.

“Now,” he said, “bring that here.”

South carried the ploughshare carefully over the stile and Luke and Campion leant over the rail behind him. Beside the right-hand post, and half hidden by the long grass, there was a clear triangular shape cut in the moss and the lichen. Root threads were still white in it, and that small grass which had persisted was brown and burned by the suffocating weight of the iron.

Very delicately, and still using a protecting handkerchief, Old Harry slid the ploughshare into the natural sheath. It fitted exactly, even to the worn edge at one corner.

“Fifteen year, mayhap twenty. Mayhap that were there when I were a little ole boy. Seen it there a score o' times. They don't forge that shape no more. Cray's shorter now.”

“Well I'll be damned,” said South with tremendous satisfaction. “How long since it was taken out of there, Mr. Buller?”

The use of the name and prefix put Old Harry exactly where he wanted to be, on top. He gave no sign that he had heard, but he swelled a little and became intent on doing his best. He touched the worn place, laid his cheek against it, examined the corpse of a woodlouse he found among the matted roots, and finally ate a piece of the young grass from beside it.

“Mite more'n a week,” he said finally, which was, as he knew by more ordinary methods, not far out.

South grunted. “Where did it go after that, I wonder.”

Old Harry rose up and looked about him. He was far
too much of an artist to give himself away, but he was most anxious to continue to shine. After a decent interval he clambered over the stile and went round under the oak tree, where he knelt down and held his head sideways, so that the contours in the dust stood up high in his vision. Suddenly he saw quite plainly what he was looking for and his grunt was astounded quite as much as it was gratified.

“Come you here, come you here,” he shouted and Luke, who was already on the right side of the stile, leapt down to join him. On being shown how to look he was amazed to see the imprint of the ploughshare not once but several times on the soft crumbling earth. He was fascinated.

“How did that happen?” he demanded.

“Once when that fell,” said Old Harry, adding ‘I doubt not' less he should be misunderstood. “When that was throwed from the Battus' side.”

“Battus?”

“That little old mound or wall, like. That's the Battus.”

“I see, chum. And then what? How came the other imprints?”

Harry shook his head. He was on dangerous ground. “Mayhap that were kicked,” he suggested. “That was lying in the footpath, the policeman said.”

“It might have been kicked. But it's been here all right. Take a dekko at this, Mr. Campion. It's amazing.”