The Tale of Holly How (20 page)

“People?”

“Miss Martine and Dr. Gainwell.”

“What did they say, then?” The boy sounded as if he was humoring her.

The girl took a deep breath. “I
told
you, Jeremy. I was sitting in the garden outside the library. The window was open and Miss Martine and Dr. Gainwell were in the library. They were talking about
me
.”

“Did they mention you by name?”

“No, they just called me ‘the girl,’ but I’m the only girl at Tidmarsh Manor, aren’t I? Anyway, Miss Martine said that I threatened their plan, and Dr. Gainwell said he didn’t know what she was talking about, because I’d be going away to school in a few weeks, and then she’d have free rein.”

“Free rein?” The boy was puzzled. “Free rein to do what?”

“To carry out their plan, whatever it is,” the girl said impatiently. “It has something to do with ‘the old lady,’ who has got to be Grandmama. Anyway, Dr. Gainwell said he didn’t see how I could threaten the plan, because I didn’t have any power. And she said he’d never been able to see anything, even when he was a boy, unless it was an inch in front of his nose.”

“But I thought Miss Martine and this man had just met,” the boy objected.

“That’s what they want people to think,” the girl said, “but it’s obviously not true. They must’ve known one another for a long time. And I don’t think he’s a missionary, either. His hands are wrong.”

“But if he says you can’t threaten their plan, whatever it is, then what do you have to be afraid of? Really, Caroline, I don’t understand—”

“But I
do
threaten their plan!” the girl wailed. “I don’t understand it either, but she said I threatened it, by my very existence! And he said that she surely couldn’t be suggesting that they—” She stopped.

“They what?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said wearily. “She got up and closed the window, and that’s when I ran away. It . . . it sounded as if he thought she wanted to be rid of me.”

“Well, they
are
going to be rid of you,” the boy said reasonably, “when you go away to school.”

“No, not that way. Get rid of me forever, I mean. Make . . . something happen to me. That’s why I hid up here. I was in the woods and I heard him calling my name and knew he was looking for me. I ran up here to get away from him.”

The boy gave a skeptical chuckle. “Now, really, Caroline, don’t you think that you’re—”

“I am
not
exaggerating, Jeremy Crosfield!” the girl cried. “I’m not imagining things, either. And if that’s what you really, truly think, you can just go away and leave me alone. I can take care of myself, you know. I’ve been doing it for a long time. I don’t need you to look after me.”

There was a silence, and then the boy said, quite firmly, “I am not going away, Caroline. I don’t understand half of what you’re saying, but whatever this is, we’re in it together. We’ve just got to figure out what to do, that’s all. You can’t stay here—it’s too wet and there’s nothing to eat. You can’t come home with me, because my Aunt Jane is sick, and I don’t want to bother her with an explanation, which I couldn’t make very well, anyway. What’s more, there’s nothing to be gained by hiding. All of this—whatever it is—has to be brought out into the open, sooner or later. And the sooner the better, if you ask my opinion. Missionary or not, Dr. Gainwell, is supposed to be the next head teacher. At least, that’s what everybody in the village says. So what are we going to do?”

In the dark, rainy silence, Bosworth heard a man’s voice calling, faint and far away, and a vole rattled the brambles. At last, the girl said, very low, “I think we ought to talk to Miss Potter.”

“Miss Potter?” the boy asked. “How do you—oh, that’s right. She came to see you this morning.”

“Yes, and brought me her guinea pig. I liked her, straight away. She seems to be able to . . . well, see
through
things, somehow. And through people. I think she already understands about Miss Martine. She’ll know what to do. But I don’t know where to find her.”

“She’s staying at Belle Green,” the boy said. “She’s probably there now, getting ready to go to bed.” There was a scraping sound, as if he were standing up. “If you want to talk to her, I’ll take you there. But we’ll have to go a roundabout way, over Oatmeal Crag and down the hill behind Belle Green. Otherwise, we might run into one of the search parties, and they’d take you back to the Manor.”

The girl thought about this for a minute. “All right,” she said. “We’ll go. Just a minute, whilst I get Tuppeny. He’s in that old basket over there.” Another scraping sound, and then a half-stifled shriek. “Jeremy, he’s gone!”

“What? Who?”

“Tuppenny! The guinea pig Miss Potter gave me to look after. I found that basket when I first got to the hut, and I put him into it, and now he’s not here! See? There’s a hole in the bottom, and he’s got out. He’s lost! However will I find him? And whatever will I tell Miss Potter? I promised her I should take good care of him.”

The badger shook his head.
“Tuppenny? No, he’s not lost. He couldn’t be better. He’s at The Brockery, having a nice bit of late supper.”
But he said this to himself, in a low, badger voice, since he knew that humans could not understand him.

“Well, we’re not going to find him in the dark, that’s for certain,” Jeremy said. “I’ll come back up here tomorrow and look for him. We’d better get going now, though. If we wait much longer, Miss Potter will have gone to bed.”

25

Miss Potter Entertains Guests

Miss Potter had not, in fact, gone to bed. She was in her bedroom, dressed in her old blue dressing gown. She had taken her hair down and was sitting beside the fire, writing in her journal, something she had not had time to do during the past few days.

Beatrix began her journal when she was fourteen. Because she was a very private person and didn’t want her mother or her brother or her governess to read what she wrote, she had invented her own secret code, a kind of cipher shorthand—the same sort of cipher (although of course not the very
same
) that Caroline Longford had been using. And because she was sure that no one would ever read what she wrote, she could say exactly what she pleased about everything and everybody.

Tonight, there was a great deal to record. She wrote about finding Ben Hornby’s body, and lending Tuppenny to Caroline, over the objections of the unpleasant Miss Martine. She wrote about meeting Isaac Chance (“an altogether weasely sort of person” she noted), and finding the tongs on Holly How, and learning from Captain Woodcock that they were badger tongs. She also wrote that Miss Nash had been appointed to the position at Sawrey School after all, and—most importantly, as far as she was concerned—that Caroline had gone missing. As she wrote, she heard voices in the street outside the house and knew that at least some of the searchers were straggling back into the village. But there had been no celebratory shouting, and Mr. Barrow had not rung the bell from the Arms, as he promised he would do when the girl was found.

Beatrix frowned. When Mr. Heelis had first told them about Caroline, she had been both surprised and perplexed, for the girl had not struck her as the sort who would wander into the woods or the fells and carelessly lose her way—although, of course, accidents could happen to anyone. Still, now that she’d had time to think about it, she suspected that something else was going on here. If Caroline had not wandered off, she must have run away. Why? And where had she gone?

Beatrix turned down the wick on the paraffin lamp and went to stand at the window, looking out at the rain-wet landscape. The storm had blown off to the east, but streaks of lightning occasionally flickered from cloud to cloud and thunder grumbled along the fells. She pushed the casement window open and let the cool, wet air flow over her body.

As she stood there, watching the lightning and listening to the thunder, Beatrix was very glad not to be in London, where the air was so foul with smoke and soot that she couldn’t draw a deep, full, easy breath. In London, she’d be bone-weary and ready for bed almost before it was time to light the lamps, whilst here, she was scarcely tired at all, although she had been busy and active all day, walking and climbing and driving—and dealing with Mr. Biddle.

She smiled into the darkness. Every time she came to Sawrey, she felt better, and clearer, and stronger. She only wished that she never had to go home to London. No, she corrected herself. London was her parents’ home, her old home. Her new home, her
heart’s
home, was here.

Behind her, she heard the quiet, comfortable sounds of her animals—the two rabbits and Tom the mouse, turning and sighing and snuggling in their beds—and remembered Tuppenny. Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to leave him at Tidmarsh Manor. Perhaps Miss Martine had made trouble about him, and that was why Caroline had left. It might be a good idea to go up to Lady Longford’s in the morning and retrieve Tuppenny, just in case he was the cause of the trouble. It might—

Shadows moved in the garden below. A bush rustled, and an urgent voice called, very low, “Miss Potter! Miss Potter!”

Beatrix looked down, focused, then looked again. Two slight figures were half-concealed in the shrubbery, peering up at her. One was Jeremy Crosfield. And the other was a girl. Caroline Longford! Caroline was safe!

Beatrix leaned out the window. “Hello out there!” she cried, just above a whisper. The Crooks slept on the other side of the house, and had gone to bed long ago, but it didn’t do to take chances. “What do you want? Can I help?”

“We hope so,” Jeremy said. “Please, Miss Potter, may we come up and talk? We promise to be very quiet.”

“I’ll let you in,” Beatrix said, pulling on her slippers. Taking the lamp, she hurried down the back stairs, slid the bolt on the door, and opened it. “Do come in,” she said, drawing them inside. “Why, you’re wet through, both of you! And shivering! You must be very cold.”

“Not very,” Jeremy said stoutly, although Caroline’s teeth were chattering and her skirt was clinging wetly to her legs.

“Up the stairs with you,” Beatrix said, very firm. “I’ll just put the kettle on.”

When the kettle was heating on the kitchen range, Beatrix flew back upstairs, sent Jeremy into the empty room next door to dry himself off as well as he could, and found Caroline a towel and a dry nightdress and shawl. Then she hurried back to the kitchen to fix a tray. Ten minutes later, the three of them were sitting on the rug in front of the fire, with cups of hot tea and thick slices of bread and cheese.

“I must apologize for not having anything more to offer,” Beatrix said, handing around the last of the cheese. She smiled. “I don’t usually entertain guests here, you see.”

“But this is splendid,” Caroline said, “ever so much better than the hut.” She smiled at Jeremy, who was wearing a woolen blanket draped over his bare shoulders, whilst his damp shirt steamed in front of the fire. “We didn’t have any bread and cheese and tea there.” She stretched out her bare toes to the flames. “And no fire, either,” she added gratefully.

“Well, then,” Beatrix said, “if you’re feeling warmer and more like yourselves, are you ready to tell your story?” And then, as she listened with growing surprise and dismay, Caroline related what she had heard in the garden outside the library that afternoon.

“—And so I stuffed Tuppenny into my pocket and ran away as fast as I could,” the girl concluded. “I walked in the woods for a time because I couldn’t think where to go. And then I heard Dr. Gainwell calling my name, and I didn’t want . . .” She gave Beatrix a furtive glance. “I didn’t want him to find me. I remembered the old shepherd’s hut on Holly How, and I knew he wouldn’t think to look for me there.” She sighed and wiggled her toes. “I didn’t plan to stay away. I thought I would go back before teatime, you see. But the longer I thought, the more I didn’t want to go back. And then finally—”

“And then I heard that Caroline was lost, and that the men in the village were going out to look for her,” Jeremy said, taking up the story. “And I thought of all the places she might go—the big hollow beech in Cuckoo Brow Wood, and the dell under the rocks, and the old shepherd’s hut. I went looking and found her in the hut, and she told me what she’d heard.” His grin was crooked. “I didn’t believe it, you know, not at first. And I expect that you don’t, either, Miss Potter.”

“Let me see if I have it right, Caroline,” Beatrix said. “You overheard Miss Martine and Dr. Gainwell talking about some sort of plan, which can’t be carried out because of you. Do you have any idea what kind of plan it might be?”

Caroline shook her head. “It has something to do with Grandmama, that’s all I know. And I’m a problem because I’m her granddaughter, and my going away to school isn’t going to solve it. The problem, I mean.”

Beatrix studied the girl gravely, not liking what she heard. It sounded not only mysterious, but ominous, as if there were some sort of conspiracy afoot. “And you thought,” she asked, “that the two of them had known each other for a very long time?”

Caroline nodded vigorously. “Dr. Gainwell already knew about the plan, whatever it was. And I’m sure Miss Martine wouldn’t talk the way she did to somebody she’d only just met.”

Beatrix picked up the teapot. “Which suggests,” she said, “that Dr. Gainwell might not be the person he’s pretending to be.” She paused. “I’m sorry there’s no more bread and cheese, but there’s more tea in the pot. Who wants some?”

“I do,” Jeremy said, holding out his cup.

“I’ll have more, too,” Caroline said. “And two sugars.” Cradling her cup to warm her hands, she added, “I wondered the same thing, you know. Missionaries used to visit my parents, and they always told us all about their adventures. But Dr. Gainwell doesn’t seem to have any stories to tell. And his hands are soft. Missionaries have to work with their hands.”

“If he’s pretending to be a missionary,” Jeremy said thoughtfully, “he might be pretending about other things, too. Like being a teacher.” He slid a glance at Beatrix. “You know, don’t you, Miss Potter, that he’s to be the next head teacher at Sawrey School?”

“Actually, he’s not,” Beatrix said, putting down the teapot. “The trustees have appointed Miss Nash to the post. Mr. Heelis told me this afternoon.”

“Oh, that’s smashing!” Jeremy exclaimed happily. “So we can stop worrying about
that,
at least. And Miss Nash can stop worrying too.”

“But we still have to worry about the plan, whatever it is,” Caroline put in. “We have to do something—only I can’t quite think what.” She gave Beatrix an anxious look. “You don’t think I’m making this up, do you, Miss Potter?”

“No, I don’t,” Beatrix replied. She didn’t want to say it out loud, but she had her own suspicions about Miss Martine. An outwardly meek and docile person whose eyes glittered like the eyes of a hawk and who would pinch a child or a dog was not to be trusted, in her view.

Suspicions were one thing, however, and practical action quite another. But what to do? “I think,” she said slowly, “that we ought to look into things a little more carefully.”

“Look into what things?” Jeremy asked.

“Well,” Beatrix said, “if Dr. Gainwell isn’t who he says he is, who is he? But whilst we’re thinking about the things that need looking into, there are things that need to be done. Jeremy, on your way home, I should like you to stop at the pub and tell Mr. Barrow to ring the bell, so that people will know that Caroline is safe. And please ask him to send someone to Tidmarsh Manor to let them know, too. Tell him—” She paused. “No, it would be better if I write a note to Lady Longford, I expect. You can give it to Mr. Barrow to be delivered.”

“What will you say?” Caroline asked, frowning.

“That you are safe with me, although you are wet and tired and that I’ve put you to bed. That I will bring you home at her ladyship’s earliest convenience.”

“It will never be convenient,” Caroline burst out bitterly. “Not for Grandmama, and not for Miss Martine and Dr. Gainwell! I don’t want to go back.” She looked around the room, at the comfortable furniture, the flickering firelight, the drowsy animals. “I’d really rather stay here with you. Please?”

Beatrix smiled and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Well, you’re here right now, and I’ll do all I can to help sort things out. Tomorrow, early in the morning, I suggest that we go to see Mr. Heelis and Captain Woodcock. I want you to tell them what you’ve told me.”

Caroline brightened. “I know Mr. Heelis—he met my ship in Liverpool and brought me here, and he’s Grandmama’s solicitor. He’s a very nice man. But who is Captain Woodcock?”

“He’s the Justice of the Peace for Sawrey district, and he knows your grandmother. He’ll have some ideas, I’m sure. Now, I’ll write that note.” Beatrix got to her feet. “But wait—I’ve forgot to ask about Tuppenny, Caroline. Will someone make sure that he has food and water?”

Caroline and Jeremy exchanged silent glances. Finally, Caroline spoke. “I’m so sorry, Miss Potter,” she said guiltily, “but I’m afraid I’ve . . . I’ve lost him.”

“Lost Tuppenny!” Beatrix exclaimed, dismayed. “But how? Where?”

“There was an old basket in the hut,” Caroline said, near tears. “I thought it would be a safe place for him to take a nap—roomier and more comfortable than my pocket. But when I went to get him, he wasn’t there. He got out through a hole, you see. He was . . . gone.”

“I’ll go up to Holly How first thing in the morning and look for him,” Jeremy said. “I’m sure I’ll find him,” he added comfortingly to Caroline. “He’s probably still in the hut somewhere.”

Beatrix was not so sure. Tuppenny’s ancestors might have flourished in the wild jungles of South America, but he himself was not an outdoor animal. He had lived all of his short life in a cage or his wicker traveling basket, and had no experience of the outside world. But he was an extremely curious little animal, and the minute he got out of that basket, he had likely run as far and as fast as he could, delirious with freedom and the opportunity to explore. By this time, he would surely have regretted his escape. No doubt he was wandering across the open fell, wet and lost, easy prey for owls or foxes or stoats.

She pressed her lips together, not wanting to make Caroline feel even worse than she already did. “Jeremy’s right, I’m sure,” she said, in the most soothing voice she could manage. “Tuppenny will be found in the morning. And then he’ll have a tale to tell, won’t he?”

Beatrix couldn’t know the half of it.