Watson's Choice (8 page)

As soon as the nurse and the small child had turned towards the library door, she picked up an ash-plant from the collection of walking-sticks and umbrellas in the hall and stepped briskly on to the terrace. The sun was making a gallant attempt to disperse the thinning fog, but there was almost no wind, and it seemed likely that as soon as the sun went in the fog would return to its former density.

Preferring the mud to the crunching gravelled surface of the drive, she crossed the park by means of a slippery path which led to a gate in a high wall, and followed the main road until she reached a large and hideous pub. It occurred to her that a glass of sherry would be pleasant, so she pushed open the door of the lounge bar and went in. It was a place which did most of its business in the evening, and there were not more than a dozen people in the bar. One of these she recognized. With some surprise she observed that the nursery governess was seated at a table in an alcove. She was talking to a moody-looking young man who spent most of the time staring into his half-empty glass and occasionally nodding his head.

It was no concern of a guest at Sir Bohun’s house what one of his employees did with her time, but Mrs Bradley could not help wondering whether the girl was absent from her duties with or without permission. The latter seemed the more likely, as the nurse, Mrs Call, had expected to find her in the house and had not been told that she would be absent.

Mrs Bradley sipped sherry and studied her. She saw, as before, a good-looking, fair-haired, generously-built young woman with a face too hard and arrogant for her years. She felt that Sir Bohun might have made a happier choice of a nursery governess if appearance was anything to go by. On the other hand, the girl
might
be feeling tired after the party, and her apparently hard expression might be due merely to fatigue. She could not help remembering, however, something which she had noted only absently at the time, and that was the look of fury on Linda Campbell’s face when the copy of
Endymion
had been presented to Mrs Godley. So it had been intended for Linda, Mrs Bradley suddenly realized, and one of Sir Bohun’s fits of freakish and rather cruel humour had caused him to change his mind about the recipient – probably at the very last moment, if Mrs Bradley knew anything of his mentality.

‘He probably
does
intend to marry the girl,’ she thought, sipping her sherry and glancing idly round the room, ‘and that was one of his ideas for bringing her to heel before he actually commits himself, I suppose. He ought to know by this time that it is well beyond his scope to bring
anybody
to heel, let alone a hard-faced little minx of this type!’

Mrs Bradley finished her sherry and glanced at her watch. She would be late for lunch if she did not leave at once. She was nearer the door than were the girl and her companion, and she did not think they had noticed her, for their conversation appeared to absorb every scrap of their attention, although, from their attitude, it did not appear to be based upon any very pleasant topic, for neither the man nor the girl did anything but frown in concentration over it.

The road-house – it could not be called anything else – adjoined the heath. Mrs Bradley slipped out and took a narrow path which led on to the heath and continued across it to a village. At first the path bordered fairly closely upon crowded, ancient bushes, mostly of hawthorn, beside which it wound a meandering, muddy way, but beyond the bushes there was open country whose rough grass and coarser weeds covered deep beds of gravel except where these had been laid bare by excavation, an excess of which had inundated the landscape with unlovely stretches of water. The village to which the path led possessed a Norman church, an Elizabethan manor house, and some beautiful eighteenth-century houses. Mrs Bradley had been told about it, and a sudden fancy took her to visit it that very day.

She had not gone far across the heath, so she returned to the road-house, found a public telephone in the vestibule, rang up Sir Bohun’s house to say that she would not be in before
tea-time
, and went into the road-house restaurant for lunch.

She ordered steak and kidney pie and a half-bottle of Burgundy, finished with biscuits and cheese, and, after a thoroughly enjoyable meal, picked up her ash-plant and on her way out peeped in at the door of the lounge bar. She saw that the nursery governess and her acquaintance had gone; they had not come into the restaurant.

By this time the sun had almost dispersed the fog, but what remained, dense over the gravel-ponds and thicker about the bushes than on the open heath, contrived to give an unreal, dreamlike effect which she enjoyed. The air was mild, and she did not feel in the mood to hurry, particularly so soon after lunch, so that it was past two o’clock by the time she came to the first of the gravel pits and to the mechanical aids with which the gravel was excavated, cleaned, and separated into its components of various-sized pebbles and rough sand.

In parts of Cornwall the china-clay hills, and, in the north of England, the slag heaps, contrive to make the landscape almost intolerably hideous. On the heath the long mounds of waste material from the gravel beds, although less striking, were equally ugly and unnatural. The desolate appearance of the sheets of placid water which bordered the excavations was not particularly interesting, either, and Mrs Bradley was not at all sorry to get away from the gravel pits and to see before her the squat tower of the village church. As she approached it she passed a plump elderly woman who was exercising what Mrs Bradley felt certain was the Hound of the Sherlock Holmes party. She registered the fact with interest but without apprehension.

The little church possessed no features out of the ordinary. True, it held a pre-Norman font and a
rebus
in the form of a skeleton, this last in memory of a certain Septimus Boddy, vicar of the parish in the early seventeenth century, but Mrs Bradley was unable to admire either of these furnishings, or to seek and find evidence of the existence of a rood staircase, identify a squint, admire an eighteenth-century sounding board (still in a complete state of preservation and looking rather like a small-scale model of King Arthur’s Round Table) or pause beside an unusually-shaped holy-water stoup by the south door. In other words, she found the church locked! She was not in the least surprised, and, shrugging philosophically, she stepped out briskly for home.

By the time she reached the road-house, the fog and the darkness,
between
them, had made the use of her electric torch imperative, and it was with pleasure but not with surprise that she found her own car, its orange fog-light on, awaiting her at the road-house. Her chauffeur had parked it beneath the tremendous arc-lights which, advertising the place, were powerful enough to defeat the fog and the darkness, so that she saw the car at once. The man opened the door and had her inside, with the rug over her knees, in a matter of seconds. He had been in her employment for a quarter of a century and had learned when, and when not, to expect her. When her telephone message had been communicated to him by Sir Bohun’s butler, he had allowed her a couple of hours, had driven to the road-house, and, having enquired for her there, had settled down with his usual patience to await her return from her walk.

Mrs Bradley reached Sir Bohun’s house to find her host in a fine mixture of apprehension and indignation – fretting and fuming, in fact, and, it appeared, with some reason.

‘She hasn’t been here all day,’ he said. ‘It’s extremely unsatisfactory. And now that fellow has gone chasing after her, and without leave! If he weren’t so reliable and good as a tutor to Philip, who is twice the lad he was since Grimston came along, I’d sack him out of hand. Besides, he’s in love with the girl, and that doesn’t do when they’re both under the same roof all the time.’

‘I saw Timothy’s governess this morning at the
Queen of the Circus
road-house,’ Mrs Bradley remarked.

‘Did you? What the heck was she doing at a place like that?’ Sir Bohun sounded interested, not indignant.

‘She was drinking beer and talking – possibly quarrelling – with a handsome – possibly disillusioned – young man.’

‘Good heavens! In
my
time and on wages
I
pay! And even if she
was
at the
Queen
this morning, where is she now? It’s nearly dinnertime, and the fog is thicker than ever. Do you suppose she’s got lost?

‘It would be easy enough. I have an excellent bump of locality, but, even with the aid of an electric torch, I found it needed concentration to find my way back across the heath in the late afternoon. The fog is much thicker there than here.’

‘Well, she’ll have to find
some
reasonable excuse when she
does
get back,’ said Sir Bohun. ‘Hang the girl! I never
could
manage women! Thank God my adopted brats are boys! My brother had
that
much sense! But what makes you mention the heath? She
wouldn’t
be going over there. No, she’s off on a toot up to Town, and, what’s more, that fellow Grimston’s gone with her, although I must admit that
he
had the grace to ask for the afternoon off! Hang it all! I pay the girl to teach young Timothy, not to mess about in public houses! You say they were quarrelling, she and this whoever-it-was?’

‘Well, at any rate, they appeared to be arguing some grave matter. It did not strike me that they were having a lovers’ quarrel. It seemed something deeper, more impersonal, than that.’

‘I should hope so, indeed. You know, Beatrice, I’ve looked at the girl once or twice myself. I haven’t a son, except Manoel, and I don’t want a bastard for my heir.’

‘Bastards are conceived before they are born,’ said Mrs Bradley pointedly. ‘As for Miss Campbell, I advise you to leave well alone.’

‘Why? Don’t you like the girl, Beatrice?’

‘My liking has nothing to do with it. It is your own which would need to be consulted.’

‘Oh,
I
don’t like her at all. But we should not need to see very much of one another. I have my own interests, and naturally she would have hers. And I should not be mean about money.’

‘No. She relies upon that.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Nothing, except that she has refused to consider marrying Mr Grimston because he is poor and not likely to become rich. It seems to be her only reason.’

‘I knew Grimston was after her, poor young devil! No, he’ll never get far. It doesn’t take a genius to see that. The girl’s got sense if she’s turned him down. I’ll try to get him another job, though, when I’ve finished with him for Philip. Fair’s fair, after all. What do you think of Philip, Beatrice? Anglo-Indian children often get off to a bad start. The boy is a nice little chap, intelligent, bright – but delicate, very delicate. Hoping he’ll grow out of it. Nothing like decent English air to build up a delicate boy.’

‘Then why are you sending him to school in Switzerland?’

‘Oh, that’s Baynes’ idea. Doctor’s orders, if you please! Can’t go against them, though, can I? ’Tisn’t done to know better than the doctor.’

‘Is little Timothy going with him?’

‘Haven’t decided yet. Seems a bit young at present. See at the end of July. He’ll be turned seven by then.’

Sir Bohun glanced at the clock, and then took out his watch and compared the two. As he did so, the dressing-bell sounded. Sir Bohun looked contrite.

‘Oh, Lord, Beatrice! You haven’t had any tea! I’ll get some sent up to your room. You can have it while you dress. Don’t bother about much war-paint. We shall be a family party to-night.’

Mrs Bradley went to her room and found her secretary installed in an armchair beside a small table. Laura got up as Mrs Bradley came in.

‘I’m parked here because I want to talk to you rather particularly,’ Laura announced.

‘It is always a pleasure to see you,’ her employer politely replied. Then she added, ‘It is about Miss Campbell, I imagine.’

‘Uncanny,’ said Laura. ‘That’s what it is – uncanny. Tell you what, though: it’s serious, too. The bird Grimston came skulking up to me in the shrubbery – to be exact, the conservatory, where, again to be exact, I was stalling off the amorous advances of that bull-fighting Manoel boy – between ourselves, no Valentino! – and confided that he happened to know that the Campbell was almost certainly dead and that her body was to be found over against the gravel ponds on the heath. I asked him how he knew, and how he had been able to see it in the fog. At that, he merely wagged his head in a daft kind of way, and, giving Manoel a dirty look – my open palm had found a ready mark on that swarthy cheek – he toddled off. I thought you had better know as soon as possible. Personally, I think Grimston’s cuckoo.’

Mrs Bradley clicked her tongue.

‘It is true that Miss Campbell is still missing from this house,’ she said. ‘I will speak to Mr Grimston, and then, if his story remains constant and bears any evidence of being true, well, we have a policeman among us.’

‘Gavin? Yes. What does he mean by risking my maiden virtue with the Manoels of this wicked world?’

‘He is not in the house?’

‘Of course he’s in the house. He’s teaching Philip to play billiards. He’s taken a fancy to the child. Thinks well of his intelligence, I gather.’

‘And the boy thinks well of Robert’s handsome manly appearance, I make no doubt. Robert is good with children. I have marked it before.’

‘Oh, people always fall for Gavin,’ said Laura offhandedly. ‘I don’t know why I don’t fall harder for him myself. I doubt whether I am cut out for wifehood. I think, after all, I will wait until I’m forty. I shall know my own mind by then. Hullo! Here’s tea. I haven’t had any yet. Too busy. May I join you? There seems plenty for two.’

‘You will spoil your dinner,’ said Mrs Bradley, watching, with fascinated gaze, Laura’s ruthless dealing with buttered muffins and cherry jam.

‘Impossible,’ replied Laura, ‘as well you know. Another cup of the Suchong? Refreshing stuff, and they make it rather well. I say, there couldn’t
really
be anything in Grimston’s yarn, could there, do you suppose? An elaborate and somewhat tasteless leg-pull, should you think?’