“I think I’m going to be sick,” Ruth said, when she and Brat were left alone in the stand.
“I don’t wonder,” said Brat.
“Why?” she was surprised into saying, this being not at all the reaction she expected.
“Three ices on top of dressed crab.”
“It is not anything I ate,” she said, repressive. “It’s that I have a delicate nervous system. Excitement makes me feel ill. I get sick with it.”
“I should go and get it over,” Brat advised.
“Be sick, you mean!”
“Yes. It’s a wonderful feeling.”
“If I sit very still I may feel better,” Ruth said, giving up.
Ruth was feeling her lack of importance to-day. She avoided horses too consistently for the rest of the year to claim any right to exhibit any on this one day at Bures, so she sat in the stand in her neat grey flannel and looked on. It was to her credit that she did not grudge her twin her well-earned place in the sun, and was passionately anxious that Jane should come first in her class.
“There’s Roger Clint with Eleanor.”
Brat looked for the couple and found them.
“Who is Roger Clint?”
“He has a big farm near here.”
Roger Clint was a black-browed young man, and he was being old-friendly with Eleanor.
“He’s in love with Eleanor,” said Ruth, having failed with one try for drama.
“A very good person to be in love with,” Brat said, but his heart contracted.
“It would be a very good thing if she married him. He has lots of money and a lovely big house and simply scads of horses.”
Against his will Brat asked if Eleanor were thinking of it.
Ruth considered the pros and cons or this as they fitted into her dramatic framework.
“She is making him serve his seven years for her. You know: like Jacob. He is simply frantic about it, poor Roger, but she is La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”
La Belle Dame Sans Merci bade Mr. Clint a temporary farewell and came up to join them in the stands as the Novices under Ten filed into the ring.
“Do you know that Tony scraped into this by the skin of his teeth,” she said, sitting down by Brat. “He is going to be ten the day after to-morrow.”
There were eleven novices, the youngest being a fat child of four in a black velvet jockey cap, who bounced about on a solid pony of which she had no control whatever.
“Well, at least Tony never looked as awful as that, even in his bad days,” Eleanor said.
“Tony looks wonderful,” Ruth said, and Tony did indeed look wonderful. As Eleanor had said on an earlier occasion, Tony had the root of the matter in him.
The novices walked, and trotted, and cantered, under the lenient eye of the judges, and presently the seeding began. Even from the stand the fanatic determination in Tony’s snail-black eyes was plain to see. He was going to be in the money or die in the attempt. From being six possibles they were narrowed down to four, but these four kept the judges puzzled. Again and again they were sent out to canter and brought back for inspection, and sent out to canter again. There were only three prizes and one must go.
It was at this stage that Tony played what he evidently considered his ace. As he cantered along in front of the stand he got to his knees in the saddle and with a slight scramble stood up in it, straight and proud.
“Oh, God,” said Eleanor reverently and with feeling.
A ripple of laughter went through the stand. But Tony had another shot in his locker. He slipped to his knees, grabbed the front edge of the saddle, and stood on his head, his thin spider-legs waving rather uncertainly in the air.
At that a gale of laughter and applause broke out, and Tony, much gratified, resumed his seat and urged his astonished pony, who had slowed to a trot, into a canter again.
That of course settled the matter very nicely for the judges, and Tony had the mortification of seeing the three rosettes handed to his rivals. But his mortification was nothing to the mortification he had already inflicted on his preceptress.
“I hope I don’t see that child until I cool off,” she said, “or I am liable to take an axe to him.”
But Tony, having handed his pony over to Arthur, came blithely to the stands to find her.
“Tony, you little idiot,” she said, “what made you do a thing like that?”
“I wanted to show how I could ride, Eleanor.”
“And where did you learn to do those circus tricks?”
“I practised on the pony that mows the lawn. At school, you know. He has a much broader back than Muffet, and that’s why I wasn’t so steady to-day. I don’t think these people appreciate good riding,” he added, nodding his head at the offending judges.
Eleanor was speechless.
Brat presented him with a coin and told him to go and buy himself an ice.
“If I didn’t want to see Jane ride,” Eleanor said, “I would go and bury my shame in the ladies’ room. I’m curdled with humiliation.”
Jane, on Rajah, in her best riding things, was a pleasant sight. Brat had never seen her in anything but the shabby jodhpurs and shapeless jersey that she wore at home, and was surprised by this trim little figure.
“Jane has the best seat of all the Ashbys,” Eleanor said affectionately, watching the serious and efficient Jane making Rajah change his leg to order. “That is her only rival: that tall girl on the grey.”
The tall girl was fifteen and the grey very handsome, but the judges preferred Jane and Rajah. Jane might have lost for all the emotion she showed, but Ruth was rapturous.
“Good old Jane,” Simon said, appearing beside them. “A veteran at nine.”
“Oh, Simon, did you see!” Eleanor said, in agony again as she remembered.
“Cheer up, Nell,” he said, dropping a commiserating hand on her shoulder. “It might have been worse.”
“How could it be worse?”
“He didn’t yodel,” Simon said.
At that she began to laugh, and went on laughing. “Oh, I suppose it is very funny,” she said, wiping her eyes, “and I expect I shall laugh over it for years, but at the moment I just wish I could be in Australia for the rest of the afternoon.”
“Come on, Nell,” he said. “It’s time to collect the horses,” and they went away together as Jane came to sit in the stand.
“This is the exciting class coming now. It isn’t very much to win a Fifteen and Under,” was her answer to Brat’s congratulations. “Some day I’ll be down there with them. With Aunt Bee, and Eleanor, and Simon, and Peggy, and Roger Clint, and all of them.”
Yes, there was Roger Clint. Eleanor was riding the long-backed bay mare Scapa, and Roger Clint was standing next to her on a chestnut with four of the longest and whitest stockings Brat had ever seen. While the judges walked down the row he and Eleanor talked quietly together.
“Who do you think will be first?” Jane asked.
Brat took his eyes from Eleanor and Clint and forced himself to consider the entry. The judge had sent Bee out to canter Chevron, the chestnut he was going to race this afternoon, and she was coming down in front of the stands now. He had never seen Bee in formal riding clothes, and was surprised again, as he had been with Jane. It was a new, serious, rather intimidating Bee.
“Who do you think, Brat?” Jane said again.
“Timber, of course.”
“Not Peggy’s horse? The one Dick Pope had?”
“Riding Light? No. He may win the jumping, but not this.”
And he was right. This was the judges’ first sight of Timber and they were too much impressed to be seduced even by the looks and reputation of Riding Light.
And it was a popular verdict. As Simon cantered Timber down in front of the stands after accepting the rosette the applause broke into cheering.
“Isn’t that the brute that killed old Felix?” a voice behind said. “They ought to shoot it instead of giving it prizes.”
Second was Peggy on Riding Light, looking flushed and pleased; her father’s extravagance had been justified. Third, rather unexpectedly, was Bee on Chevron.
“The Ashbys cleaning up as usual,” the voice said, and was instantly shushed, and the proximity of the Ashbys presumably indicated.
It was when the Open Jumping Class began that the real excitement of the day was reached, and Bee came to sit in the stand and share it with them.
“Number One, please,” said the loud-speaker, and Eleanor came into the ring on Scapa. Scapa was a careful and unemotional jumper, but could never be persuaded into standing away from her fences. By dint of patient schooling with a guard rail, Eleanor hoped that she had now persuaded her into better ways. And for half a round it worked, until Scapa noticed that there was no plaguey obstruction to beware of at the foot of these jumps, and began to go close in again, with the inevitable result. Nothing Eleanor could do would make her take off in time. She jumped “fit to hit the moon,” but came down in the wrong place, and the little battens of white-painted wood came down with her.
“Poor Nell,” said Bee. “After all her schooling.”
Number Two and Number Three did not appear to have been schooled at all.
“Number Four, please,” said the loud-speaker, and Riding Light appeared. Peggy’s “new outfit” consisted of a dark snuff-coloured coat a little too tight in the waist, and a pair of buff breeches a little too pale in the buff, but she looked well on the brown horse and handled him beautifully. Or rather, she sat still and let Riding Light do his stuff. He was a finished jumper who took the obstacles in his stride, propelling himself into the air in a long effortless curve and tucking his hind feet after him like a cat. He went out having done a perfect round.
“Number Five, please,” said the loud-speaker.
Number Five was Roger Clint’s mount with the long white stockings. “Do you know what he calls it?” Bee said. “Operation Stockings.”
“It’s very ugly,” Brat said. “Looks as if he had walked through a trough of whitewash.”
“He can jump, though.”
He could certainly jump, but he had phobia about water.
“Poor Roger,” laughed Bee, watching Stockings refuse the water. “He has been jumping him backwards and forwards across the duck pond at home in the hope of curing him, and now he does this!”
Stockings continued to refuse, and Clint had to take him out, in a burst of sympathetic applause.
Numbers Six and Seven had one fault each.
Number Eight was Simon on Timber.
The black horse came into the ring exactly as he had come out of his box on the day Brat first saw him, pleased with himself and ready for homage. His excited, flickering ears pricked into attention as he caught sight of the jumps. Simon took him into a canter and moved down to the first one. Even from where he was sitting, Brat could feel the smoothness of that action. The smoothness that had astonished him that first day at Latchetts when he had ridden on the top of the down. Smoothly the black horse rose into the air and came down on the far side of the jump, and a murmur of admiration came from the crowd at the almost feline beauty of it. Brat, with the most wholehearted respect, watched Simon’s body swing with the black horse’s rise and fall as though he were part of it. It was right that Simon should ride it. He would never attain that perfection if he lived to be a hundred. A great silence settled on the crowd as one by one the jumps fled away behind Timber. It would be monstrous if this beauty were to fail or be faulted. It was so quiet when he faced the water jump that the voice of a paper-seller far away at the main gate was the only sound to be heard. And when he landed smoothly and neatly on the far bank, a great sigh went up from them. They had seen a perfect thing. They had not been cheated of it after all.
So moved were they that Simon was almost out of the ring before the applause broke out.
The last three entries had been scratched, and Simon was the final performer, so the second round began as soon as he had left.
Eleanor came back on Scapa, and by dint of voice and spur managed to make the unwilling mare take off at the proper place, and so did something to retrieve her self-respect. The crowd, appreciating what had been wrong in the first place and what she had now succeeded in doing, gave her credit for it.
Number Two did a wild but lucky round, and Number Three a wild and unlucky one; and then came Peggy again, still flushed from the pleasure of her perfect round.
Again she had the sense to sit still while Riding Light heaved her into the air with the thrust of his tremendous quarters, sailed over the jump, and made for the next one with his ears erect and confident. It seemed that there was nothing to hinder the brown horse doing this all day. There was an air of routine about the business that somehow detracted from his performance; he made it look too easy. There seemed little doubt that he would do another perfect round. His judgement of distance was faultless. He never had to stop and put in a short one to bring him to the proper taking-off point; he arrived at the taking-off point by some computing of his own, taking the jumps in his stride as if they were hurdles. He was coming up to the wall now, and they waited to see if he would treat that, too, like a hurdle.
“Thump! Thump! Thump!” said the drum of the Bures Silver Band, as the preliminary to Colonel Bogey and their entry into the front gate of the show for their afternoon performance. Riding Light’s ears flickered in question, in doubt. His mind was distracted from that rapidly nearing wall. His ears shot forward again in alarm as he saw it almost upon him. He shortened his stride, trying to fit it into the remaining space, but he had misjudged it. He rose at it with determination and landed on the other side, flinging his quarters upwards in a successful effort to avoid hitting the fence that was now too close under him. But the shoe of his near fore had touched the wall as he rose to it, and a billet slid out of place, wavered a moment on the edge, and then dropped to the ground.
“A-a-ah!” said the crowd in quick sympathy, and Peggy looked back to see what had happened. She saw the little gap in the top of the wall, but it did not rattle her. She collected Riding Light, patted him encouragingly on the neck, and headed him for the next.
“Good girl, Peggy!” murmured Bee.
The distant band was now playing Colonel Bogey, and Riding Light took no further notice of it; he knew all about bands. Bands had been the accompaniment to some of his best performances. He settled down again to his routine, and finished by taking the water jump with a margin that made the crowd gasp.
“Simon will never beat that,” Bee said. “That perfect round of Timber’s was a miracle in the first place.”
The four long stockings of Roger Clint’s mount flashed round the ring in a brisk and willing fashion until they came to the water. Faced with the long distance to the last jump, Stockings stopped and pondered. Clint argued amiably with him, but Stockings would have none of it. “I know what is behind that hedge quite well, and I don’t like it!” he seemed to be saying. And then, with that perennial unreasonableness of horses, he decided to have a go at it. Of his own accord he turned towards the jump and began to canter. Roger sat down and drove him at it, and Stockings went flying down to it with purpose in every line of him. In the last half-second he changed his mind just as suddenly as he had made it up, stuck both toes in hard, and skidded to a stop up against the fence.
The crowd laughed, and so did Roger Clint. He hauled himself back into the saddle from his position round his mount’s neck. He took Stockings round to the other side of the fence and showed him the water. He took him up to it and let him inspect it at close quarters. He walked him round it and let him look at the other edge. And then he took him back to the far end of the ring and turned him to the jump. With an air of “Oh, well, let’s get this thing over with” Stockings jumped off his haunches, tore down the ring, and fled over the water with a yard or two to spare.
The crowd laughed delightedly, and the white teeth showed in Clint’s brown face. He lifted his hat to the applause without looking at them, as a cricketer lifts his cap, and rode out of the ring, well satisfied to have ignored the judge’s disqualifying eye long enough to have induced Stockings to cross the hated obstacle.
Number Six had two faults. Number Seven two-and-a-half.
“Number Eight, please,” said the loud-speaker, and Jane shivered and put her hand in Bee’s. For once Ruth did not have to manufacture drama to suit her; her mouth was open with suspense and she was entirely oblivious of Ruth Ashby.
Timber had neither the experience nor the machine-like power of Riding Light. He had to be ridden. It rested as much on Simon’s judgement as on Timber’s powers whether they could beat the almost faultless performance of Peggy Gates’s horse. Brat thought that Simon looked very white about the mouth. There was more in this for Simon than winning a cup at a small country show. He had to take that prize from the girl who had tried to be upsides with him by introducing a made winner to beat his own untried horses.
Timber came in looking puzzled. It was as if he said: “I’ve done this.” His ears pricked at the sight of the jumps and then flickered in question. There was no eagerness to go at them as there had been when it was a new experience. But he went good-manneredly down to the first and cleared it in his effortless fluid fashion. Brat thought that he could hear the Ashby hearts thumping alongside him. He could certainly hear his own; it was making a noise like the Bures Silver Band’s drum. Simon was half-way round. Ruth had shut her mouth and her eyes and looked as if she were praying. She opened her eyes in time to see Timber clear the gate; a smooth river of black pouring over the white barrier. “Oh, thank you, God,” said Ruth. There was only the wall and the water left.
As Timber turned at the far end of the ring to come back to the wall a gust of wind lifted Simon’s hat from his head and sent it bowling along the ground behind him. Brat was of the opinion that Simon was not even aware of it. Not even Tony Toselli had shown a concentration like Simon’s. For Simon there quite patently existed nothing in this world but himself, the black horse, and the jumps. No one, no one, was going to come between Simon Ashby and the sun and get away with it.
Everything that Simon knew of riding, everything he had learned since he first sat on a pony at the age of two, was devoted to getting Timber safely over the wall. Timber did not like hard bare obstacles.
He had started his canter to the wall when a shrieking white terrier shot out from the stand in pursuit of the distant hat, streaking across in front of the advancing Timber like a hard-kicked ball, and yelling its excitement as only a terrier can.
Timber swerved from this terror and broke into a sweat.
Ruth shut her eyes again and resorted to further prayer. Simon soothed Timber patiently, cantering him round and making much of him while someone retrieved the dog and brought it back to its owner. (Who said: “Poor darling Scottie, he might have been killed!”) Patiently, while the unforgiving seconds ticked on, Simon worked to reassure Timber. He must know that time was running out, that the dog incident was now officially over and each additional second’s delay piling up against him.
Brat had marvelled often at Simon’s powers of self-control, but he had never seen a more remarkable sample of it. The temptation to take Timber to the jump as he was must be enormous. But Simon was taking no chances with Timber. He was pawning time to gain a little better odds for Timber.
And then, having apparently calculated his time to the nearest possible margin, he brought Timber, still sweating but collected, to the wall again. Just before he came to the fence Timber hesitated a little.
And Simon sat still.
If it had been possible for Brat to like Simon Ashby he would have liked him at that moment.
The horse, undistracted from the task in front of him, gathered himself together and catapulted himself over the hated obstacle. And then, relieved to have it behind him, he raced on delightedly to the water and rocketed across it like a blackbird.
Simon had done it.
Jane took her hand out of Bee’s, and wiped her palms on a screwed-up ball of handkerchief.
Bee slipped her arm through Brat’s and squeezed it.
The great burst of cheering made speech inaudible.
In the quiet that succeeded it Ruth said, as one remembering an awkward engagement: “Oh, dear! I’ve pawned my month’s allowance.”
“To whom?” asked her aunt.
“God,” said Ruth.
Brat surveyed himself in the small cracked mirror of the Gent’s Temporary Dressing-room and decided that primrose and violet did not become him any better than they became Simon. It would take Roger Clint’s dark face to do justice to those springtime glories. Roger Clint would probably look dashing in them. He was in no mood to look favourably on Roger Clint. Whenever he had caught sight of Eleanor this afternoon it seemed that she was in the company of Mr. Clint, and what is more, seemed to be enjoying the company.
Brat tugged the yellow visor a little farther over his eyes. A sick misery burned in him; a spiritual heartburn.
“What’s it got to do with you?” said a voice in him. “You’re her brother: remember?”
“Shut up!”
“Can’t have your cake and eat it, you know.”
“Shut up!”
He walked out of the almost deserted dressing-room and went to find Chevron. The serious business of the day was over and there was an air of relaxation. In the shade of the trees competitors who had taken part in the sober events were now walking ponies and coffeehousing while they waited for the bending race. Alone for the moment, on a solid dun pony, was Peggy Gates, her eyes roving over the crowd in search of someone. She looked tired and discouraged. As Brat came level with her he paused and said:
“That was very bad luck.”
“Oh, hullo, Mr. Ashby! What was?”
“The big drum.”
“Oh, that!” she said, and smiled at him. “Oh, that was just one of those things.”
She sounded quite philosophical about it, and yet Brat could have sworn that when he came up she had tears in her eyes.
“Good luck to the race,” she said.
Brat thanked her and was moving away when she said: “Mr. Ashby, have I done anything to offend Simon, do you know?”
Brat said no, not that he knew.
“Oh. It’s just that he seems to be avoiding me lately, and I’m not aware of having done anything — anything that he wouldn’t ——”
There were undoubted tears in her eyes now.
“Oh, you know,” she said, tried a smile, didn’t manage it very well, and moved away with a wave of her hand.
So it had not been a desire to be mistress of Latchetts that had moved pretty Peggy; it was devotion to Simon. Poor Peggy. Simon would never forgive her for Riding Light.
Eleanor was waiting under the trees on Buster, but stirrup to stirrup with her was Roger Clint, who had also found a pony for the bending race. Roger was pouring out a long story and Eleanor was nodding sympathetically; Brat gave them a wide berth and betook himself to the stables. In the stables he found Bee and Gregg. Gregg saw him weighed out and saddled Chevron, who was nervous and unhappy.
“It’s the sound of the crowd that worries her,” Gregg said. “Something she hears and can’t understand. If I were you, Mr. Patrick, sir, I’d take her out and walk her. Take her out and show her the crowds and she’ll be so interested she’ll forget her nerves.”
So Brat took the dithering chestnut out into the park, and she became gradually quieter, as Gregg had known she would. Presently Simon found him and suggested that it was time to be going down to the start.
“Did you remember to sign the book?” he asked.
“Book?” said Brat. “Sign for what?”
“To show that you consent to your horse running.”
“I never heard of anyone signing a book. The horse was entered, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but in previous years they had trouble with gate-crashers. Some bright sparks who took out horses that didn’t belong to them, when their owners didn’t intend to run them. Had a free jaunt on them, and in at least one case broke the already tired horse down.”
“All right. Where is the book?”
“In the weighing-room place. I’ll look after Chevron till you come back. No need to take her into that mêlée.”
In the little office, sitting behind the desk, was Colonel Smollett.
“Well, young Ashby, your family has been doing very well to-day, eh? Three firsts, no less. Are you going to add a fourth? Book? What book? Oh, the paper. Yes, yes. Here it is.”
Brat, signing the single sheet of paper that was presented to him, said that he had never heard of this procedure.
“Probably not. Never heard of it myself. But it does insure the show against loss to a certain extent. That fellow whose horse was ridden unbeknownst to him last year, he sued the Show for damages. Very nearly got them, too. So your brother suggested this method of insurance.”
“My brother? Simon suggested it?”
“Yes. Got a head on him, Simon. Now no one can say that his horse was pulled out without his permission.”
“I see.”
He went back and retrieved Chevron from Arthur’s custody.
“Mr. Simon said he couldn’t wait, Mr. Patrick, but he said to wish you luck. He’s gone back to the stands with the rest of the family to watch the finish.”
“All right, Arthur; thanks.”
“Would you like me to come to the start with you, sir?”
“Oh, no, thanks.”
“In that case, I’ll go and see about getting myself a place to see from. Good luck, sir. We’re betting on you.”
And he hurried off through the crowd.
Brat put the reins over Chevron’s head and was just about to mount when he thought that he would take one more look at the girth. He had already tightened it, but perhaps he had made it too tight.
But someone had loosened the girth.
Brat stood holding up the flap with his hand and stared. Someone had loosened it since he left the mare with Simon. He put his hand under the girth and tested its degree of slackness. He reckoned that it would have got him out of the park into the country and would have lasted perhaps another two fences. After that, the saddle would have slipped round on the highly excitable Chevron and she would have gone crazy.
Arthur? No, not Arthur. Simon almost certainly.
He tightened the girth and made for the start. As he arrived he was overtaken by Roger Clint in white and scarlet on Operation Stockings.
“You’re Patrick Ashby, aren’t you?” he said. “My name is Roger Clint.” He leaned over and shook hands. “Very nice to have you at Bures again.”
“Who won the bending race?” Brat asked.
“I did. By a short head from Nell.”
“Nell” indeed!
“She won it last year on Buster, so it is just as well that the thing should go round. And I wanted a silver cup, anyway.”
Brat had no time to ask why he had this longing for a silver cup. They were lining up, and he was Number Five, and Roger Clint was away on the outside. There were fourteen runners and a considerable amount of jostling. There was no gate, of course, the start being by flag.
Brat was in no hurry at the start. He let the others lead him so that he could gauge the opposition. At least five, he decided, were horses that had been ridden so much to-day that they were of no consequence and were merely cluttering up the course and spoiling things for their betters. Three more he had seen jumped in a junior competition, and had no belief that they would ever get round the course. That left five possibles, and of these three were dangerous: a bay charger ridden by his officer owner; a great raking brown youngster ridden by a young farmer; and Roger Clint’s mount.
They took the hurdles at a tearing pace, and two of the overworked lot, fighting for position, struck into each other and rolled into a third. One of the “junior” jumpers came a frightful purler over the first fence going into the country, and brought down the other two over-tired animals. Which cleared the field very happily.
Chevron liked seeing her horses in front of her, and was patently enjoying herself. She loved jumping and was taking her fences with an off-handed confidence. One could almost hear her humming. She watched the other two “junior” jumpers fail to get over a blind fence and flicked her heels in their faces.
The field was thinning out very nicely.
Brat began to move up.
He passed the fifth of the possibles without effort. The fourth was making a noise like a pipe band but seemed good for a little yet. In front of him at the farthest point of the course were the soldier on the bay charger, the farmer on the big young brown horse, and Roger Clint on the chestnut with the white stockings. Apart from his own Chevron, Clint’s was probably the best quality horse in the race, but like the soldier was riding like a veteran, and the farmer like someone who has no respect for his neck.
It was a right-handed course, and the farmer’s young horse jumped consistently to the right, so that no one could with any safety come up on the inside of him as long as he hugged the turns tightly. And since no one wanted to go wider than they need at the turns they dallied a little behind the big brown until they could come into the straight and pass him without disadvantage. It was going to be a race when they came back to that last half-mile of park.
Gradually the pipe band that had been so long at his left ear faded backwards into the distance, and when they came back to the park there were only four of them in it: the soldier, the farmer, Clint, and himself. He didn’t mind about the other two, but he wanted very much to beat Roger Clint.
Clint had a look round as they left the country behind, and flashed a friendly smile to him. After that there was no time for courtesies. The pace was turned on with the suddenness of a tap, and the four of them pounded down the green avenue between the fluttering red flags as if classic honours were waiting for them at the other end. The big young brown horse began to sprawl; and the charger, though steady as a rock and apparently tireless, seemed to have no turn of speed to finish with. Brat decided to keep Chevron’s nose level with the chestnut’s quarters and see what transpired. Together they forged ahead of the bay and the brown. The farmer was using his whip and his horse sprawled more at every lift of it. The soldier was sitting still on the bay and evidently hoping that stamina would tell in the end.
Brat had a good look at Stockings and decided that he was tiring rapidly and that Clint, from the careful way he was riding him, knew it. There were two hurdles to go. He had no idea how much speed or stamina Chevron might have left, so he decided that the safest method was to try to trick Clint out of it. He shook Chevron up and took her up level with Stockings as if he were making his effort. Clint increased his speed to match, and together they crossed the last two obstacles, Brat still by his own choice a little in the rear, and therefore out of Clint’s vision. Then Brat eased the pressure momentarily, and Clint, taking it for granted that a falling back so near the post argued failing stamina, was glad that he would not have to ask his mount for the last ounce and relaxed a little. Brat gathered Chevron together with all his strength and came like a rocket from behind him. Clint looked, startled, and set Stockings alight again, but it was too late. They were far too near the post for that, as Brat had reckoned. He had stolen the race.
“Of all the ‘old soldier’ tricks to fall for!” laughed Clint, as they walked their horses together to the weighing-room. “I ought to have my head examined.”
And Brat felt that whether Eleanor was going to marry him or not he really did like Roger Clint quite a lot.
Brat had expected that Simon’s success would have shored up his disintegrating spiritual structure and that the cracks would have disappeared. But it seemed that the very opposite had happened. The strain of the afternoon followed by the triumph of having beaten a performer like Riding Light had eaten away a little more of the foundation and shaken his equilibrium still further.
“I’ve never seen Simon so cock-a-hoop,” Eleanor said, watching Simon over Brat’s shoulder as they danced together that night. She said it as one making an apology. “He is usually so off-hand about his triumphs.”
Brat said that it was probably the champagne, and turned her away from her view of Simon.
He had looked forward all day to dancing with Eleanor, but it was with Bee that he had danced first. Just as he had given up his first chance of a ride with Eleanor to walk on Tanbitches with the ghost of Pat Ashby, so when faced with the moment of his first dance with Eleanor he had found something else that he wanted more. He had crossed the room to Bee and said: “Will you dance with me?” They had danced together in a happy quiet, her only remark being: “Who taught you to cheat someone out of a race like that?”
“I didn’t have to be taught. It’s original sin.”
She laughed a little and patted him with the hand that was lying on his shoulder. She was a lovely woman, Bee Ashby, and he loved her. The only other person he had ever loved was a horse called Smoky.
“I haven’t seen much of you this afternoon since that awful exhibition of Tony’s,” Eleanor said.
Brat said that he had wanted to talk to her before the race but that she was in deep conversation with Roger Clint.
“Oh, yes. I remember. His uncle wants him to give up the farm and go and live in Ulster. His uncle is Tim Connell, you know, who has the Kilbarty stud. Tim wants to retire, and would lease the place to Roger, but Roger doesn’t want to leave England.”
Understandably, Brat thought. England and Eleanor together was heaven enough. “I don’t see him here to-night?”
“No, he didn’t stay for the dance. He just came to get a silver cup to take home to his wife.”
“His wife!”
“Yes, she had their first baby last week, and she sent him to the show to get a christening mug for it. What is the matter?” she asked.
“Remind me sometime to break Ruth’s neck,” he said, beginning to dance again.
She looked amused and said: “Has Ruth been romancing?”
“She said he wanted to marry you.”
“Oh, well, he did have an idea like that but it’s a long time ago. And of course he wasn’t married last year, so Ruth probably didn’t know about it. Are you going to be all patriarchal and supervise my marriage plans?”
“Have you any?”
“None at all.”
As the night wore on and he danced more and more with Eleanor, she said: “You really must dance with someone else, Brat.”
“I have.”
“Only with Peggy Gates.”
“So you’ve been keeping track of me. Am I keeping you from dancing with someone you want to dance with?”
“No. I love dancing with you.”
“All right, then.”
This was perhaps the first and the last night he would ever dance with Eleanor. A little before midnight they went up together to the buffet, filled their plates, and took them to one of the little tables in the balcony. The buffet was part of the actual hotel building, and the balcony, a piece of Regency ironwork, looked down on the little garden at the side of the hotel. Chinese lanterns hung in the garden and above the tables in the balcony.
“I’m too happy to eat,” Eleanor said, and drank her champagne in a dreamy silence. “You look very nice in your evening things, Brat.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you like my frock?”
“It’s the most beautiful frock I ever saw.”
“I did hope you would like it.”
“Have you had supper already to-night?”
“No. Only some drinks and a sandwich.”
“Better eat, then.”
She ate in an uninterested fashion that was new in Eleanor.
“It has been an Ashby occasion, hasn’t it, the Seventy-fourth Annual Show of the Bures Agricultural.... Stay still for a moment, you have a gnat crawling down your collar.”
She leant over and struck the back of his neck lightly. “Oh, it’s going down!” In a rough sisterly fashion she bent his head aside with one hand while she retrieved the insect with the other.
“Got it?” he said.
But she was silent, and he looked up at her.
“You’re not my brother!” she said. “I couldn’t feel the way I——” She stopped, horrified.
In the silence the beat of the distant drums came up from the assembly room.
“Oh, Brat, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean that! I think I must have drunk too much.” She began to sob. “Oh, Brat, I’m sorry!” She gathered up her bag from the table and stumbled from the dim balcony into the buffet room. “I’ll go and lie down and get sober.”
Brat let her go and sought counsel in the bar. There was some sort of stunt in the assembly room at midnight, and the bar was deserted except for Simon, all by himself with a bottle of champagne at a table in the far corner.
“Ah! My big brother,” said Simon. “Are you not interested in the lottery drawing? Have a drink.”
“Thanks. I’ll buy my own.”
He bought a drink at the bar and carried it down the long room to Simon’s table.
“I suppose lottery odds are too long for you,” Simon said. “You want the table rigged before you bet.”
Brat ignored that. “I haven’t had a chance of congratulating you on your win with Timber.”
“I don’t need praise from you.”
Simon was certainly drunk.
“That was very rude of me, wasn’t it?” he said like a pleased child. “But I enjoy being rude. I’m behaving very badly to-night, aren’t I? I seem to be slipping. Have a drink.”
“I’ve got one.”
“You don’t like me, do you?” He looked pleased by Brat’s dislike.
“Not much.”
“Why not?”
“I suppose because you are the only one who doesn’t believe that I am Patrick.”
“You mean, don’t you, that I’m the only one who knows you’re not?”
There was a long silence while Brat searched the shining eyes with their odd dark rim.
“You killed him,” he said, suddenly sure of it.
“Of course I did.” He leaned forward and looked delightedly at Brat. “But you’ll never be able to say so, will you? Because of course Patrick isn’t dead at all. He’s alive, and I’m talking to him.”
“How did you do it?”
“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s very simple.” He leaned still closer and said in a mock-confidential undertone: “You see, I’m a witch. I can be in two places at once.”
He sat back and enjoyed Brat’s discomfiture.
“You must think that I’m a lot drunker than I am, my friend,” he said. “I’ve told you about Patrick, because you are my posthumous accomplice. A wonderful epithet, that, and I managed it very well. But if you think that I am going to make you free of the details, you are mistaken.”
“Then, why did you do it?”
“He was a very stupid little boy,” he said in his airy “Simon” tone, “and not worthy of Latchetts.” Then he added, without fa?ade: “I hated him, if you want to know.”
He poured himself another glass of the Ayala, and drank it. He laughed under his breath, and said: “It’s a wonderful spiritual twinship, isn’t it? I can’t tell about you and you can’t tell about me!”
“You have the advantage of me, though.”
“I have? How?”
“You have no scruples.”
“Yes; I suppose it is an advantage.”
“I have to put up with you, but you have no intention of putting up with me, have you? You did your best to kill me this afternoon.”
“Not my best.”
“You’ll improve on it, I take it?”
“I’ll improve.”
“I expect you will. A person who can be in two places at once can do better than a loosened girth.”
“Oh, much better. But one has to accept the means to hand.”
“I see.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t like, in return for my confidences, to tell me something?”
“Tell you what?”
“Who you are?”
Brat sat looking at him for a long time.
“Don’t you recognise me?” he said.
“No. Who are you?”
“Retribution,” said Brat, and finished his drink.
He walked out of the bar and hung for a little over the banisters until his inside settled down and his breath came more easily. He tried to think of some place where he could be alone to think this thing out. There was nowhere in the hotel; even in his bedroom Simon might join him at any moment; he would have to go out.
He went to get his coat from Number 17, and on the way back again he met Bee.
“Has everyone gone crazy?” Bee said angrily. “Eleanor is upstairs crying, Simon is getting drunk in the bar, and now you look as if you had seen a ghost. What is the matter with everyone? Have you had a quarrel?”
“A quarrel? No. Eleanor and Simon have had a wearing day, I expect.”
“And what makes you so white about the gills?”
“Ballroom air. I’m from the wide open spaces: remember?”
“I’ve always understood that the wide open spaces were just seething with dance halls.”
“Do you mind if I take the car, Bee?”
“Take it where?”
“I want to see the sun rise over Kenley Vale.”
“Alone?”
“Definitely alone.”
“Put on your coat,” she said. “It’s cold out.”
At the top of the rise looking over Kenley Vale he stopped the car and shut off the engine. It was still dark and would be dark for some time yet. He got out and stood on the grass verge, leaning against the bonnet, and listened to the silence. The earth and grass smelt strong in the cool damp after the sun of yesterday. The air was motionless. Far away across the Vale a train whistled.
He had a cigarette, and his stomach felt better. But the turmoil had merely moved up. The turmoil was now in his head.
He had been right about Simon. He had been right in seeing the resemblance to Timber: the well-bred creature with the beautiful manners who was also a rogue. Simon had told the truth, back there in the bar. He had been glad to tell him the truth. They said all killers wanted to boast about their killings; Simon must have longed often to tell someone how clever he had been. But he could never tell until now; when he had a “safe” listener.
He, Brat Farrar, was the “safe” listener.
He, Brat Farrar, owned Latchetts, and Simon took it for granted that he would keep what he had taken. That he would keep it as Simon’s accessory.
But that, of course, was not possible. The unholy alliance with Loding was one thing; but the alliance that Simon took so mockingly for granted was not possible. It was monstrous. Unthinkable.
And that being that, what was he going to do about it?
Go to the police and say: Look, I’m not Patrick Ashby at all. Patrick Ashby was killed by his brother eight years ago. I know, because he told me so when he was a little drunk.
And then they would point out that in the course of their investigation into the death of Patrick Ashby it was proved that Simon Ashby had spent the relevant hours in the smith’s company in Clare.
He could tell them the truth about himself, but nothing would be changed except his own life. Patrick Ashby would remain a suicide.
How had Simon done it?
“One has to accept the means at hand,” he had said, about his slackening of the girth.
What “means at hand” had there been that day eight years ago?
The slackening of the girth had been a combination of planning and improvisation. The “signing the book” suggestion had been a long shot. If it worked successfully to get him out of the way, then Simon was free to complete the rest of his plan. If it did not work, then no harm was done. The set-up was innocent to the observer’s eye.
That was the way Simon’s mind had worked about the girth, and that was the way it had worked eight years ago, undoubtedly. The set-up that was innocent and unquestionable. The using of the means at hand.
How, eight years ago, had Simon used an innocent set of circumstances to provide him with the chance he wanted?
Brat’s mind was still toiling round and round the problem when the first sigh of the stirring air told him that the dawn was coming. Presently the wind came again, lifting the leaves this time and ruffling the grass, and the east was grey. He watched the light come. The first bird notes dropped into the quiet.
He had been there for hours and he was no nearer a solution of the problem that faced him.
A policeman came along at leisure, pushing a bicycle, and paused to ask if he were in trouble. Brat said that he was getting some fresh air after a dance.
The policeman looked at his starched linen and accepted his explanation without remark. He looked at the interior of the car and said: “First time I ever saw a young gentleman getting fresh air alone after a dance. You haven’t made away with her, by any chance, have you, sir?”
Brat wondered what he would say if he said: “No, but I’m accessory after the fact to another murder.”
“She turned me down,” he said.
“Ah. I see. Nursing your grief. Take it from me, sir, a week from now you’ll be so thankful you’ll feel like dancing in the street.”
And he pushed his bicycle away along the ridge.
Brat began to shiver.
He got into the car and headed after the policeman. Where could he get something hot, he asked?
There was an all-night café at the main crossroads two miles ahead, the policeman said.
At the café, warm and bright and mundane after the grey spaces of the dawn, he drank scalding coffee. A buxom woman was frying sausages for two lorry-drivers, and a third was trying his luck at a penny-in-the-slot game in the corner. They glanced incuriously at his dance clothes, but beyond exchanging greetings with him they left him alone.
He came back to Bures at breakfast time, and put the car in the garage. The Chequers vestibule had a littered look; it was still only half-past seven, and show people notoriously made a night of it. He went up to Number 17 and found Simon fast asleep, with all his clothes in one single heap on the floor just as he had peeled them off. He changed into his day clothes, quietly at first and then less carefully as he realised that only long shaking would awaken Simon in his present condition. He looked down at Simon and marvelled. He slept quietly, like a child. Had he grown so used to the thing after eight years that it no longer troubled him, or was it that it never had been a monstrous thing in his estimation?
It was a charming face, except perhaps for the pettish mouth. A delightful face; delicately made and proportioned. There was no more suggestion of wrong-doing about it than there was in the beauty that was Timber.
He went downstairs and washed, wishing that he had thought in time of having a bath. He had been too obsessed by the desire to change clothes without having to talk to Simon.
When he came into the dining-room he found Bee and the twins having breakfast, and joined them.
“Nell and Simon are still asleep,” Bee said. “You’d better come back with me and the twins in the car, and let Eleanor take Simon when they waken.”
“What about Tony?”
“Oh, he went back yesterday with Mrs. Stack.”
It was a relief to know that he could go back to Latchetts with Bee in peace.
The twins began to talk about Tony’s exploit, which was patently going to be part of Latchetts history, and he did not have to make conversation. Bee asked if the dawn had come up to expectation, and remarked that he was looking the better of it.
Through the green early-morning countryside they drove home to Clare, and Brat caught himself looking at it with the emotions of someone who has only a short time to live. He looked at things with a that-will-still-be-there attitude.
He would never come to Bures. He might never even drive with Bee again.
Whatever else Simon’s confession meant, it meant the end of his life at Latchetts.
It was Thursday morning and on Sunday Charles Ashby would come sailing up Southampton Water, and nothing would stop the subsequent celebrations. He followed Bee into the hall at Latchetts feeling desperate.
“Do you mind if I desert you and go into Westover?” he asked Bee.
“No, I think you are due a little rest from the family. Simon is for ever running away.”
So he took the bus into Westover and waited until it was time for Mr. Macallan to be having his mid-morning coffee. He went, to the Westover Times office and asked to see the files. The office boy, who showed no sign of ever having seen him before, took him to the cellar and showed him where they were. Brat read the report of the inquest all over again, but could find no help there.
Perhaps in the full report there would be something?
He went out and looked up Colonel Smollett in the telephone book. Where, he asked the Colonel, would the report of the inquest on himself be now? With the police? Well, would he make it easy for him to see it?
The Colonel would, but he considered it a most morbid and undesirable ambition, and implored young Ashby to think again.
So armed with the Colonel’s telephoned introduction, he went to see a highly amused police force, who sat him down in a leather armchair and offered him cigarettes, and set before him the coroner’s report of eight years ago with the empressment of a conjurer who has produced the rabbit from the hat.
He read it all through several times. It was merely the Westover Times’ report in greater detail.
He thanked the police, offered them cigarettes in his turn, and went away as empty of suggestion as he had come. He went down to the harbour and hung over the wall, staring westward at the cliffs.
He had a fixed point, anyhow. A fixed point that could not be altered. Simon Ashby was in Clare that day. That was held to by a man who had no reason for lying, and no suspicion that the fact was of any importance. Simon had never been long enough away from Mr. Pilbeam’s vicinity to make his absence felt.
Pat Ashby must have been killed between the time that old Abel met him in the early afternoon and the moment when Mr. Pilbeam had to chase Simon home for six o’clock supper.
Well, there was that old saying about Mahomet and the mountain.
He thought the Mahomet theory over, but was stumped by the coat on the cliff-top. It was Simon who had written that note, but Simon was never out of Clare.
It was two o’clock when he came to himself, and he went to have lunch at a small pub in the harbour. They had nothing much left, but it did not matter because he sat staring at his plate until they put the bill in front of him.
He went back to Latchetts and without going to the house went to the stables and took out one of the horses that had not been at Bures. There was no one about but Arthur, who reported that all the horses were safely back and all well except that Buster had an overreach.
“Taking him out like that, sir?” Arthur asked, nodding at Brat’s tweed suit. And Brat said that he was.
He turned up to the down as he had that first morning when he took out Timber, and did again what he had done on Timber’s back. But all the glory was gone. The whole world looked sick. Life itself tasted bad.
He dismounted and sat down where he had sat that morning a month ago, looking out over the small green valley. It had seemed paradise to him then. Even that silly girl who had come and talked to him had not sufficed to spoil it for him. He remembered how her eyes had popped when she found he was not Simon. She had come there sure of seeing Simon because it was his favourite place for exercising the horses. Because he....
The horse by his side threw up his head as Brat’s sudden movement jerked the bit in his mouth.
Because he...?
He listened to the girl’s voice in his mind. Then he got slowly to his feet and stood a long time staring across the valley.
He knew now how Simon had done it. And he also knew the answer to something that had puzzled him. He knew why Simon had been afraid that, by some miracle, it was the real Patrick who had come back.
He got on the horse and went back to the stables. The great clouds were racing up from the south-west and it was beginning to rain. In the saddle room he took a sheet of writing paper from the desk and wrote on it: “Out for dinner. Leave the front door on the latch for me, and don’t worry if I am late.” He put it in an envelope, addressed it to Bee, and asked Arthur to hand it in at the house when he was passing. He took his burberry from the back of the saddle-room door, and went out into the rain, away from Latchetts. He had the knowledge now. What was he going to do with it?
He walked without conscious purpose, unaware of anything but the dreadful question to be answered. He came to the smithy where Mr. Pilbeam was still working, and greeted him, and exchanged opinions on the work in hand and on the weather to come, without having for a moment ceased to battle with the thing in his mind.
He walked up the path to Tanbitches and up the hill over the wet grass to the crown of beeches, and walked there to and fro among the great boles of the trees, distracted and stricken.
How could he bring this thing on Bee?
On Eleanor? On Latchetts?
Had he not already done Latchetts sufficient harm?
Would it matter so much if Simon were left in possession as he had been for eight years?
Who had been harmed by that? Only one person: Patrick.
If Simon was to be brought to justice for Patrick’s death, it would mean horror beyond horror for Bee and the rest.
He didn’t have to do it at all. He could go away; stage a suicide. After all, Simon had staged Patrick’s suicide, and it had passed a police investigation. If a boy of thirteen could do that he could do it. He could just drop out, and things would be as they were a month ago.
And — Pat Ashby?
But Pat, if he could choose, would not want justice on Simon at the cost of his family’s ruin. Not Pat, who had been kind and always thought first of others.
And Simon?
Was he to make good Simon’s monstrous supposition that he would do nothing? Was Simon to spend a long life as the owner of Latchetts? Were Simon’s children to inherit Latchetts?
But they would still be Ashbys. If Simon were brought to justice there would be no more Ashbys at Latchetts.
And how would it advantage Latchetts to have its inheritance made safe by the condoning of murder?
Was it not, perhaps, to uncover that murder that he had come by such strange ways to Latchetts?
He had come half across a world to that meeting with Loding in the street, and he had said to himself that so strange a chance must be destiny. But he had not imagined it to be an important destiny. Now, it would seem, it was an all-important one.
What was he to do? Who could advise him? Decide for him? It was not fair that this should be put on his shoulders. He had not the wisdom, the experience, to deal with a thing of this magnitude.
“I am retribution,” he had said to Simon, and meant it. But that was before he had the weapon of retribution in his hand.
What was he to do?
Go to the police to-night? To-morrow?
Do nothing, and let the celebrations begin when Charles Ashby came home?
What was he to do?
It was late that night that George Peck, sitting in his study and conscious every now and then even from his distant vantage point in Thebes of the lashing rain on the window of the Rectory in Clare, heard a tapping at that window, and came back from Thebes and went to the front door. It was by no means the first time that people had tapped on that window late at night.
In the light from the hall he saw one of the Ashbys, he could not tell which because the soaked hat almost obscured the face.
“Rector, may I come in and talk to you?”
“Of course, Patrick. Come in.”
Brat stood on the step, the rain sluicing from his coat.
“I’m afraid I’m very wet,” he said vaguely.
The Rector looked down and saw that the grey tweed of his trousers was black, and his shoes an oozing pulp. His eyes went sharply to the boy’s face. Brat had taken off his limp hat and the rain-water from his soaked hair was running down his face.
“Take off your coat and leave it here,” the Rector said. “I’ll give you another one when you are ready to go.” He went to the hall cloakroom and came back with a towel. “Rub your head with that.”
Brat did as he was told, with the obedient air and fumbling movements of a child. The Rector went through to the empty kitchen and brought a kettle of water.
“Come in,” he said. “Just drop the towel where your wet coat is.” He led the way into his study and put the kettle on an electric ring. “That will be hot in no time. I often make tea for myself when I sit up late. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“A pit in Dothan.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. My mind has stopped working. Have you a drink of any kind?”
The Rector had meant to put the whisky in the tea, as a toddy, but he poured a stiff one now and Brat drank it.
“Thank you. I am sorry to come and worry you like this, but I had to talk to you. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I am here to be talked to. Some more whisky?”
“No, thanks.”
“Then let me give you some dry shoes.”
“Oh, no, thank you. I’m used to being wet, you know. Rector, I want your advice about something very important, but can I talk to you as if — as if it were confessional? I mean, without your feeling that you must do something about it.”
“Whatever you say I shall treat as confession, certainly.”
“Well, first I have to tell you something. I am not Patrick Ashby.”
“No,” agreed the Rector. And Brat stared.
“You mean — you mean, you knew I wasn’t Patrick?”
“I rather thought that you weren’t.”
“Why?”
“There is more to any person than a physical presence; there is an aura, a personality, a being. And I was almost sure the first time I met you that I had never met you before. There was nothing in you that I recognised, although you have many things in common with Patrick as well as your appearance.”
“And you did nothing about it!”
“What do you suggest that I should have done? Your lawyer, your family, and your friends had all accepted and welcomed you. I had no evidence to show that you were not Patrick. Nothing but my own belief that you weren’t. What good would it have done to express my disbelief? It did not seem to me that it would be long before the situation resolved itself without my interference.”
“You mean: that I should be found out.”
“No. I mean that you did not seem to me someone who would be happy in the life you had chosen. Judging by your visit to-night, I was right.”
“But I didn’t come here to-night just to confess to not being Patrick.”
“No?”
“No, that is only — I had to tell you that because it was the only way you could understand what has — I wish my mind was clearer. I’ve been walking about trying to get things straight.”
“Perhaps if you told me first how you came to Latchetts at all, it would at least clear my mind.”
“I— I met someone in America who had lived in Clare. They — she thought I looked like an Ashby, and suggested that I should pretend to be Patrick.”
“And you were to pay her a share of the proceeds of the deception.”
“Yes.”
“I can only say that she earned her percentage whatever it was. As a tutor she must be remarkable. I have never seen a better piece of coaching. Are you American, then?”
“No,” said Brat, and the Rector smiled faintly at the emphasis. “I was brought up in an orphanage. I was left on its doorstep.”
And he sketched for the Rector the story of his life.
“I have heard of your orphanage,” the Rector said, when he had finished. “It explains one thing that puzzled me: your good upbringing.” He poured tea, and added whisky. “Would you like something more substantial than biscuits, by the way? No? Then have the oatmeal ones; they are very filling.”
“I had to tell you all this because of something I found out. Patrick didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.”
The Rector set down the cup he was holding. For the first time he looked startled.
“Murdered? By whom?”
“His brother.”
“Simon?”
“Yes.”
“But, Patrick! That —— What is your name, by the way?”
“You forget. I haven’t got one. I’ve always been called Brat. It was a corruption of Bartholomew.”
“But my dear fellow, that is absurd. What evidence have you of anything so incredible?”
“I have Simon’s word for it.”
“Simon told you?”
“He boasted about it. He said that I could never do anything about it because it would mean giving myself away. He knew as soon as he saw me that I wasn’t Patrick, you see.”
“When did this extraordinary conversation take place?”
“Last night, at the Bures ball. It wasn’t as sudden as it sounds. I began to wonder about Simon long before that, and I challenged him about it because of something he said about knowing I wasn’t Patrick, and he laughed and boasted about it.”
“I think that the setting of this scene does a lot to explain it.”
“You mean you think we were drunk?”
“Not exactly. Elated, shall we say. And you challenged Simon on the subject, and Simon with his perverted sense of mischief provided you with what you expected from him.”
“Do you really believe I have as little intelligence as that?” Brat asked quietly.
“It surprises me, I must admit. I have always considered you to be highly intelligent.”
“Then believe me, I am not here because of a piece of fooling on Simon’s part. Patrick didn’t commit suicide. Simon killed him. Deliberately. And what is more, I know how he did it.”
And he told him.
“But Brat, you have no evidence even now. That is theory, what you have just told me. An ingenious and likely theory, I admit. It has the merit of simplicity. But you have no evidence whatsoever.”
“We can get the evidence, if the police once know the truth. But that isn’t what I want to know. What I want advice about is — well, whether to let sleeping dogs lie.”
And he explained his dilemma.
But the Rector, rather surprisingly in view of his silence about his doubts of Brat’s identity, had no doubts on the subject at all. If murder had been done, then the law must be invoked. Anything else was anarchy.
His point was that Brat had no case against Simon. His mind had run on murder, he had taunted Simon with it, Simon had one of his well-known impish moments and confessed, and Brat after long thought had found a theory to fit the alleged confession.
“And you think that I’ve been walking about in the rain since four o’clock because of a little joke of Simon’s? You think that I came here to-night and confessed to not being Patrick because of a little joke of Simon’s?” The Rector was silent. “Tell me, Rector, were you surprised when Pat committed suicide?”
“Exceedingly.”
“Do you know anyone who wasn’t surprised?”
“No. But suicide is a surprising thing.”
“I give up,” Brat said.
In the contemplative silence that followed, the Rector said: “I see what you meant by the pit in Dothan. That was an excellent upbringing at the orphanage.”
“It was a very thoroughly Biblical one, if that is what you mean. Simon knows that story, too, by the way.”
“I expect so, but how do you happen to know?”
“When he heard that Patrick had come back he couldn’t help, in spite of his denials, a fear that it might be true. There had been that other case, you see. That time the victim had survived by a miracle. He was afraid that by some miracle Patrick had survived. I know, because he came into that room, the first day I was there, strung up to face something dreadful. And his relief when he saw me was almost funny.”
He drank down the rest of his tea and looked quizzically at the Rector. In spite of himself he was beginning to feel better.
“Another of Simon’s little jokes was to send me out that first day on Timber, without telling me he was a rogue. But I suppose that was just his ‘perverted sense of mischief.’ And still another of his little jokes was to loosen my girth yesterday before I started a race on Chevron. But I suppose that was just one of his ‘well-known impish moments’.”
The Rector’s deep eyes considered Brat.
“I am not defending Simon — he has never been an admirable character — but tricks played on an interloper, a pretender — even dangerous tricks, are one thing, and the murder of a well-loved brother is quite another. Why, by the way, did Simon not denounce you at once if he did not believe you were his brother?”
“For the same reason that you didn’t.”
“I see. He would merely be held to be — difficult.”
“And of course, having got rid of one Patrick with impunity, he looked forward with confidence to getting rid of another.”
“Brat, I wish I could convince you that this is a figment of your imagination.”
“You must have a great respect for my imaginative powers.”
“If you look back, critically and honestly, you must see how the thing grew in your mind from quite small beginnings. An edifice of your own making.”
And that, when Brat took his leave towards two o’clock in the morning, was still the Rector’s opinion.
He offered Brat a bed, but Brat compromised on the loan of a waterproof and a torch, and found his way back to Latchetts by the soaking field-path with the rain still pouring hopelessly down.
“Come and see me again before you decide anything,” the Rector had said; but he had at least been helpful in one direction. He had answered Brat’s main question. If it was a choice between love and justice, the choice had to be justice.
He found the front door of Latchetts unlocked, a note from Bee on the hall table, saying: “Soup on the ring in the pantry,” and a silver cup on an ebony stand bearing a card in Eleanor’s writing which said: “You forgot this, you blasé rodeo hound!”
He put out the lights and crept up through the silent house to his bed in the old night nursery. Someone had put a hot-water bottle in his bed. He was asleep almost before his head touched the pillow.
On Friday morning Simon came bright and cheerful to breakfast and greeted Brat with pleasure. He commented on the process of the “trunk” murder investigations, the character of Tattie Thacker (whose value had been estimated by the court at one half-penny) and the iniquity of poisoning as a means of ridding oneself of a human encumbrance. Except for an occasional gleam in his eye he showed no awareness of their changed relationship. He was taking their “spiritual twinship” for granted.
Eleanor too seemed to be back on the old footing, although she seemed shy, like someone who has made a social gaffe. She suggested that in the afternoon they should take the four silver cups into Westover and give instructions for their engraving.
“It will be nice to have ‘Patrick Ashby’ on a cup again,” she said.
“Yes, won’t it!” Simon said.
Simon evidently looked forward to years of baiting his spiritual twin. But when Brat said, in answer to Bee, that he had talked late with the Rector, Simon’s head came up as if he had heard a warning. And after that Brat caught Simon’s glance at him every now and then.
When Eleanor and Brat were setting off for Westover in the afternoon, he appeared and insisted on making a third in the bug’s scanty space. One of the cups was his own unaided work, he said, and he had a right to say what was to go on it, and whether it should be in Roman, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek or Cyrillic script, or mere shorthand.
So powerful was Simon’s indifferent charm that even Brat found himself on the verge of wondering whether the Rector had been right and he had built his story out of whole cloth. But he remembered the horse that Farmer Gates had bought for his daughter Peggy, and concluded that that was a more reliable guide to Simon than anything Simon himself might provide.
When they had decided on the lettering for the names on the cups, Simon and Eleanor went to tea, but Brat said that he had some shopping to do. Brat had decided what he had to do in the present impasse. He could not go to the police with his story in its present form with any more hope of being believed than he had been by the Rector. If the Rector, who knew Simon’s weaknesses, refused to believe without concrete evidence, how much more would the police refuse to believe, when Simon to them was not a wayward boy but Mr. Ashby of Latchetts?
Brat therefore proposed to provide them with the evidence.
He went down to the harbour and sought a chandler’s, and there, after some consultation and a deal of choosing, bought two hundred feet of rope. The rope was so thin that it was not much thicker than stout string, but its breaking-point under tension was very much that of steel. He asked them to pack it in a cardboard box and deliver it to the Angel garage, where the bug was. He received it at the garage and packed it away in the luggage compartment.
When the others arrived to go home he was waiting innocently in the car with an evening paper.
They had packed themselves into the bug and were preparing to go when Simon said: “Whoa! We’ve forgotten to leave that old tire with them,” and he got out and opened the rear compartment to get the tire.
“What is in the box, Nell?”
“I didn’t put any box there,” Eleanor said, not moving. “It can’t be for us.”
“It’s mine,” Brat said.
“What is it?”
“Secret.”
“James Fryer and Son, Ship Chandlers,” said Simon’s voice.
Oh, God! There was a label on the box that he had not noticed.
Simon shut the luggage compartment with a bang and came back to his seat. “What have you been buying, Brat? One of those ships in a bottle? No, it is a little too large for that. One of those ships not in a bottle. One of those full-sailed galleons that sit on suburban sideboards to delight the heart of our Island Race and comfort it for being sick on the trip to Margate.”
“Don’t be a fool, Simon. What is it, Brat? Is it really a secret?”
If Simon wanted to find out what was in the box he most certainly would, by one method or another. And to make a mystery of it was to call attention to it. Far better to be apparently frank about it.
“If you must know, I’m afraid I’ll lose the knack of spinning a rope, so I’ve bought some to practise on.”
Eleanor was delighted. Brat must show them some spinning that very evening.
“No. Not till I’ve tried it out in camera first.”
“You’ll teach me how, won’t you?”
Yes, he would teach her how to throw a rope. She was going to hate him one day soon, if that rope did what it was bought for.
When they arrived back at Latchetts he took the rope out and left it openly in the hall. Bee asked about it, and accepted the explanation of its presence, and no one took any more notice of it. He wished that his last short time at Latchetts did not have to be spent in lying. It was odd that, having spent his whole time at Latchetts lying like a Levantine, he should mind so much about this smaller deception.
There was still time to do nothing about it. To leave the rope there, and not ask it to answer any question. It was the wrong kind of rope for throwing, but he could change it for the right kind.
But when night came, and he was alone in his room, he knew that he had no choice. This was what he had come half across a world to do, and he was going to do it.
The household went early to bed, still tired from their excitements at Bures, and he gave them till half-past twelve, and then prospected. There seemed to be no light anywhere. There was certainly no sound. He went downstairs and took the rope from its corner. He unlatched the dining-room window, stepped over the sill into the night, and drew it gently down again behind him. He waited for any reaction, but there was none.
He made his way softly over the gravel to the grass, sat down in the shelter of the first paddock trees, out of the range of the windows, and without need of any light, deftly knotted footholds at intervals down the length of rope. It was a pleasant reassuring thing to feel the familiar touch of rope after so long. It was a well-bred rope and answered sweetly to his demands. He felt grateful to James Fryer and Son.
He wound the rope and put the coil of it over his shoulder. In half an hour the moon would be up. It was a young moon, and not much of a lamp, but he had two good torches in his pocket and he did not very much desire a full moon’s frankness to-night.
Every five minutes he stopped and waited to see if he had been followed. But nothing at all moved in the night. Not even a cat.
The grey light of the coming moon greeted him as he came towards the foot of Tanbitches, and he found the path to Westover without having to flick a torch. He followed it up a little and then, when he could see the beech-crown of the hill against the sky, he struck off it until he reached the thicket on the upper side of the old quarry. There he sat down and waited. But again there was no sound in all the sleeping countryside except the sudden cry of a sheep on the hill. He tied the rope round the bole of the largest of the young beeches that had seeded themselves there, and let it uncoil itself until it fell over the edge of the quarry into the green thickness below. This was the steep side of the quarry. The lower side had had a narrow entrance, but it had long ago fallen together and become overgrown with an impenetrable denseness of briars. Old Abel had told him all about it the day they had sat there and talked of Patrick. Abel knew all about the quarry because he had once rescued a sheep from it. It was much easier to go down the sheer face, Abel said, than in at the lower side. In fact, to go in at the lower side, or any other side, was plumb impossible. No, there was no water in it; at least there wasn’t any twenty years ago, which was when last he went down after a sheep; the water all drained away under the hill to the sea.
Brat tested the rope several times, and felt for it fraying. But the bole of the tree was smooth, and where it went over the lip of the quarry he had padded it. He slid over the edge and felt for his first toe-hold. Now that he was level with the ground he was more aware of the brightness of the sky. He could see the dark shape of the low thicket against it, and the larger darkness of the tree above him.
He had found his first foothold in the rope now, but his hands were still on the rope where it lay taut on the turf.
“I should hate,” said Simon’s voice in its most “Simon” drawl, “to let you go without an appropriate farewell. I mean, I could just cut the rope and let you think, if you had time to think at all, that it had broken. But that wouldn’t be any fun, would it?”
Brat could see his bulk against the sky. From the shape of it, he was half-kneeling on the edge, by the rope. Brat could touch him by putting out a hand.
Fool that he had been to underrate Simon. Simon had taken no chances. He hadn’t even taken the chance of following him. He had come first and waited.
“Cutting the rope won’t do much good,” he said. “I’ll only land in the branches of some tree farther down, and yell my head off until someone comes.”
“I know better than that. A personal acquaintance of mine, this quarry is. Almost a relation, one might say.” He expelled his breath in a whispered laugh. “A sheer drop to the ground, half a hillside away.”
Brat wondered if he had time to slide down the rope in one swift rush before Simon cut it. The footholds had been for coming up again. He could just ignore them and slide. Would he be near enough the bottom before Simon realised what he had done?
Or would it be better ——? Yes. His hand tightened on the rope and he pressed on his toe-hold and lifted himself until he had almost got one knee on the turf again. But Simon must have his hand on the rope somewhere. He had felt the movement.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” he said, and brought his heel down on Brat’s hand. Brat grabbed the foot with his other hand and hung on, his fingers in the opening of the shoe. Simon brought his knife down on Brat’s wrist and Brat yelled, but continued to hang on. He dragged his right hand from under Simon’s shoe and caught him round the back of the ankle. He was covering with his body the rope in front of Simon and as long as he held on Simon could not turn to cut the rope behind him. It is very upsetting to have one’s foot grasped from below when one is standing on the very edge of a precipice.
“Let go!” said Simon, stabbing frantically.
“If you don’t stop that,” panted Brat, “I’ll drag you over with me.”
“Let go! Let go!” Simon said, hitting wildly in blind panic and not listening.
Brat removed the hand that was holding on to the edge of the shoe and caught the knife-hand as it came down. He now had his right hand round Simon’s left ankle, and his left hand was clutching Simon’s right wrist.
Simon screamed and pulled away, but Brat hung his weight on the wrist. He had the confidence of a toe-hold, but Simon had nothing to brace himself against. Simon tore at the hand that was hanging on to his knife-wrist, and Brat, with a great heave, took his right hand from Simon’s foot and caught Simon’s left hand with it. He had now got Simon by both wrists, and Simon was bent over like a bow above him.
“Drop that knife!” he said.
As he said it he felt the turf at the quarry edge settle a little and slide forward. It made no difference to him, except to press him out a little from the face of the cliff. But to Simon, already bent over by the weight of Brat’s arms and body, it was fatal.
Horrified, Brat saw the dark mass come forward on top of him. It struck him from his toe-hold, and he fell down with it into darkness.
A great light exploded in his head, and he ceased to know anything.
Bee sat in the dingy café with a cup of slopped coffee in front of her and read the sign on the other side of the road for the hundredth time in the last forty-eight hours. The sign said: MOTORISTS. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM USING YOUR HORN. THIS IS A HOSPITAL. It was only seven o’clock in the morning, but the café opened at six, and there was always at least one other customer having a meal as she sat there. She did not notice them. She just sat with a cup of coffee in front of her and stared at the hospital wall opposite. She was an old inhabitant of the café by now. “Better go out and have a meal,” they would say kindly, and she would cross the road and sit for a little with a cup of coffee in front of her and then go back again.
Her life had narrowed down to this pendulum existence between the hospital and café. She found it difficult to remember a past, and quite impossible to visualise a future. There was only the “now,” a dreary half-world of grey misery. Last night they had given her a cot in one of the sisters’ rooms, and the night before that she had spent in the hospital waiting-room. There were two phrases that they used to her, and they were as sickeningly familiar as the sign on their wall: “No, no change,” they would say, or, “Better go out and get a meal.”
The slatternly girl came and pushed a fresh cup of coffee in front of her and took away the one she had. “That one’s cold,” said the slatternly girl, “and you haven’t even touched it.” The fresh cup was slopped over, too. She was grateful to the slatternly girl but felt outraged by her sympathy. She was enjoying the vicarious drama of her presence in the café, and its implications.
MOTORISTS. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM USING—— She must stop reading that thing. Must look at something else. The blue checked pattern of the plastic tablecloth, perhaps. One, two, three, four, five, six —— Oh, no. Not counting things.
The door opened and Dr. Spence came in, his red hair tumbled and his chin unshaved. He said “Coffee!” to the girl, and slid into the seat beside her.
“Well?” she said.
“Still alive.”
“Conscious?”
“No. But there are better indications. I mean, of a chance of his regaining consciousness, not necessarily of — his living.”
“I see.”
“We know about the skull fracture, but there are no means of telling what other injuries there may be.”
“No.”
“You oughtn’t to be living on cups of coffee. That’s all you’ve been having, isn’t it?”
“She hasn’t been having that,” said the slatternly girl, putting down his full cup. “She just sits and looks at them.”
A wave of weary anger rose in her at the slatternly girl’s appropriation of her concerns.
“Better let me take you downtown and give you a meal.”
“No. No, thank you.”
“The Angel is only a mile away, and you can rest properly there and ——”
“No. No, I can’t go as far away as that. I’ll drink this cup. It’s nice and hot.”
Spence gulped down his coffee and paid for it. He hesitated a moment as if reluctant to leave her. “I have to go back to Clare now. You know I shouldn’t leave him if he wasn’t in good hands, don’t you? They’ll do more for him than I ever could.”
“You’ve done wonders for all of us,” she said. “I shall never forget it.”
Now that she had begun drinking the coffee she went on drinking it, and did not look up when the door opened again. It would not be another message from the hospital already, and nothing had any importance for her that was not a message from the hospital. She was surprised when George Peck sat down beside her.
“Spence told me I should find you here.”
“George!” she said. “What are you doing in Westover at this hour of the morning?”
“I have come to bring you comfort that Simon is dead.”
“Comfort?”
“Yes.”
He took something from an envelope and laid it in front of her on the table. It was weatherworn but recognisable. It was a slender black stylograph with a decoration consisting of a thin yellow spiral.
She looked at it a long time without touching it, then looked up at the Rector.
“Then they have found — it?”
“Yes. It was there. Do you want to talk about it here? Wouldn’t you prefer to go back to the hospital?”
“What difference does it make? They are both just places where one waits.”
“Coffee?” said the slatternly girl, appearing at George’s shoulder.
“No; no, thank you.”
“Righteeo!”
“What — what is there? I mean, what — what is left? What did they find?”
“Just bones, my dear. A skeleton. Under three feet of leaf mould. And some shreds of cloth.”
“And his pen?”
“That was separate,” he said carefully.
“You mean, it — had been — that it had been thrown down after?”
“Not necessarily, but — probably.”
“I see.”
“I don’t know whether you will find it comforting or not — I think it is — but the police surgeon is of the opinion that he was not alive — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say not conscious — when he ——”
“When he was thrown over,” Bee said for him.
“Yes. The nature of the skull injury, I understand, leads him to that conclusion.”
“Yes. Yes, I am glad, of course. He probably knew nothing about it. Just ended quite happy on a summer afternoon.”
“There were some small objects in the cloth. Things that he probably had in his trousers pockets. But the police have kept these. Colonel Smollett gave me this,” he picked up the stylograph and put it back in its envelope, “and asked me to show it you so that you might identify it. What news from the hospital? Spence was driving away when I saw him.”
“None. He is not conscious.”
“I blame myself greatly for that, you know,” the Rector said. “If I had listened with understanding he would not have been driven to this sub rosa proceeding, to that crazy night-time search.”
“George, we must do something to find out who he is.”
“But I understand that the orphanage ——”
“Oh, I know. They made the usual inquiries. But I don’t suppose they were very persistent ones. We could do much better, surely.”
“Starting from the pre-supposition that he has Ashby blood in him?”
“Yes. I can’t believe that a resemblance like that could exist without it. The coincidence would be too great.”
“Very well, my dear. Do you want it put in hand — now?”
“Yes. Especially now. Time may be precious.”
“I’ll speak to Colonel Smollett about it. He’ll know how to go about it. I talked to him about the inquest, and he thinks it may be possible to manage without your appearing. Nancy told me to ask you if you would like her to come in to Westover to be with you, or if it would only worry you to have someone around.”
“Dear Nan. Say it is easier alone, will you? But thank her. Tell her to stand by Eleanor, rather. It must he dreadful for Nell, having to toil with unimportant things in the stables.”
“I think it must be a soothing thing to have to devote oneself to the routine demands of the animal world.”
“Did you break the news to her, as you promised? The news that Brat was not Patrick?”
“Yes. I dreaded it, Bee, I confess frankly. You had given me one of the hardest tasks of my life. She was still fresh from the shock of knowing that Simon had been killed. I dreaded it. But the event was surprising.”
“What did she do?”
“She kissed me.”
The door opened, and a probationer, flushed and young and pretty, and looking in her lilac print and spreading white linen like a visitor from another world, stood in the dim opening. She saw Bee and came over to her.
“Are you Miss Ashby, please?”
“Yes?” said Bee, half rising.
“Miss Beatrice Ashby? Oh, that’s nice. Your nephew is conscious now, but he doesn’t recognise anyone or where he is; he just keeps talking about someone called Bee, and we thought it might be you. So Sister sent me across to see if I could find you. I’m sorry to interrupt you, and you haven’t finished your coffee, have you, but you see ——”
“Yes, yes,” said Bee, already at the door.
“He may be quieter, you see, if you are there,” the probationer said, following her out. “They often are, when someone they know is there, even if they don’t actually recognise them. It’s funny. It’s as if they could see them through their skin. I’ve noticed it often. They’ll say, Eileen? — or whoever it is. And Eileen says, Yes. And then they’re quiet for a bit. But if anyone else says yes, nine times out of ten they’re not fooled at all, and get restless and fractious. It’s very strange.”
What really was strange was to hear that steady stream of words from the lips of the normally silent Brat. For a day and a night and a day again she sat by his bed and listened to that restless torrent of talk. “Bee?” he would say, just as the little probationer had recounted to her. And she would say: “Yes, I’m here,” and he would go back reassured to whatever world he was wandering in.
His most constant belief was that this was the time he had broken his leg, and this the same hospital; and he was torn with anxiety about it. “I’ll be able to ride again, won’t I? There’s nothing really wrong with my leg, is there? They won’t take it off, will they?”
“No,” she would say, “everything is all right.”
And once, when he was quieter: “Are you very angry with me, Bee?”
“No, I’m not angry with you. Go to sleep.”
The world went on outside the hospital; ships arrived in Southampton Water, inquests were held, bodies were consigned to the earth, but for Bee the world had narrowed to the room where Brat was and her cot in the Sister’s room.
On Wednesday morning Charles Ashby arrived at the hospital, padding lightly down the polished corridors on his large noiseless feet. Bee went down to receive him and took him up to Brat’s room. He had hugged her as he used to when she was a little girl, and she felt warm and comforted.
“Dear Uncle Charles. I’m so glad you were fifteen years younger than Father, or you wouldn’t be here to be a comfort to us all.”
“The great point in being fifteen years younger than your brother is that you don’t have to wear his cast-offs,” Charles said.
“He’s asleep just now,” she said, pausing outside Brat’s room, “so you’ll be very quiet, won’t you?”
Charles took one look at the young face with the slack jaw, the blue shadows under the closed eyes, and the grey haze of stubble, and said: “Walter.”
“His name is Brat.”
“I know. I wasn’t addressing him. I was merely pointing out the resemblance to Walter. That is exactly what Walter used to look like, at his age, when he had a hangover.”
Bee came nearer and looked. “Walter’s son?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“I don’t see any resemblance, somehow. He doesn’t look like anyone but himself, now.”
“You never saw Walter sleeping it off.” He looked at the boy a little longer. “A better face than Walter’s, though. A good face.” He followed her into the corridor. “I hear you all liked him.”
“We loved him,” she said.
“Well, it’s all very sad, very sad. Who was his accomplice, do you know?”
“Someone in America.”
“Yes, so George Peck told me. But who would that be? Who went to America from Clare?”
“The Willett family went to Canada. And they had daughters. It was a woman, you know. Perhaps they finished up in the States.”
“If it was a woman I’ll eat my hat.”
“I feel that way too.”
“Do you? Good girl. You’re an admirably intelligent woman, Bee. Nice-looking, too. What are we going to do about the boy? For the future, I mean.”
“We don’t know yet if he has a future,” she said.
Only the Rector, Bee, Charles, Eleanor, and the firm of Cosset, Thring and Noble knew, so far, that Brat was not Patrick Ashby.
And the police.
The police, that is, at what is known as “the highest level.”
The police had been told everything, and they were now engaged in their own admirable fashion in smoothing out the mess to the best of their ability without breaking any of the laws which they were engaged to uphold. Simon Ashby was dead. It was to no one’s advantage to uncover the story of his crime. By a process of not saying too much, the ritual of the Law might be complied with, leaving unwanted truths still buried; a harrow dragging over earth that held below its surface unexploded bombs.
The coroner sat on the poor bones found in the quarry, and adjourned the inquest sine die. No one in the neighbourhood had ever been reported missing. Tanbitches, on the other hand, was a favourite camping ground for gipsies, who were not given to reporting accidents to the police. Nothing remained of the clothing but a few scraps of unrecognisable cloth. The objects found in the vicinity of the bones were unidentifiable; they consisted of a corroded piece of metal that might once have been a whistle, another corroded piece still recognisable as a knife, and several coins of small denominations.
“George!” said Bee. “What became of the pen?”
“The stylograph? I lost it.”
“George!”
“Someone had to lose it, my dear. Colonel Smollett couldn’t; he’s a soldier, with a soldier’s sense of duty. The police couldn’t; they have their self-respect and their duty to the public to consider. But my conscience is between me and my God. I think they were touchingly grateful to me in their tacit way.”
The adjourned inquest on Simon Ashby came later, since it had been postponed until Brat was capable of being interviewed in hospital. The policeman who had interviewed him reported that Mr. Ashby could remember nothing about the accident, or why he should have gone there with his brother at that hour to climb down into the quarry. He had an idea that it was the result of a bet. Something about whether there was water in the old quarry or not, he thought; but could not take his oath on it since his recollection was vague. He had serious head injuries and was still very ill. He did know, however, that he had found out from Abel Tusk that there was no water there; and Simon probably had said that that was highly unlikely, and so the contest may have arisen.
Abel Tusk corroborated the fact that Patrick Ashby had asked him about water in the quarry, and that it was an unusual thing to find the floor of an old quarry dry. It was Abel Tusk who had given the first alarm of the accident. He had been out on the hill with his sheep and had heard what he took to be cries for help from the direction of the quarry, and had gone there as fast as he could and found the undamaged rope, and had gone down to the blacksmith’s and used his telephone to call the police.
Bee, replying to the coroner, agreed that she would most certainly have taken steps to put an end to any such plan had she heard about it. And the coroner expressed his opinion that it was for that reason that the thing had been done sub rosa.
The verdict was death by misadventure, and the coroner expressed his sympathy with the family on the loss of this high-spirited young man.
So the problem of Simon was settled. Simon who, before he was fourteen, had killed his brother, calmly written a note on that brother’s behalf, tossed the pen into the abyss after his brother’s body, and gone home calmly to six o’clock supper when he was chased out of the smithy. Who had joined the night search for his brother on his pony, and some time during that long night had taken his brother’s coat to the cliff-top and left it there with the note in the pocket. Who was now to be mourned by the countryside as a high-spirited young man of memorable charm.
The problem of Brat remained.
Not the problem of who he was, but of the problem of his future. The doctors had decided that, having against all probability lived so long, he was likely to go on living. He would need long care, however, and a peaceful life if he was to recover properly.
“Uncle Charles came to see you one day when you were ill,” Bee said to him when he was well enough to keep his attention on a subject. “He was astonished by your resemblance to Walter Ashby. My cousin.”
“Yes?” said Brat. He was not interested. What did it matter now?
“We began inquiries about you.”
“The police did that,” he said wearily. “Years ago.”
“Yes, but they had very little to come and go on. Only that a young girl had arrived by train with a baby, and gone away by train without one. The train had come from the crowded Birmingham district with all its ramifications. We started at the other end. Walter’s end. We went back to where Walter was, somewhere about twenty-two years ago, and began from there. Walter was a rolling stone, so it wasn’t easy, but we did find out that, among his other jobs, he was in charge of a stable in Gloucestershire for a couple of months while the owner was away having an operation. The household was a housekeeper and a young girl who cooked. She was a very good cook, but her real ambition was to be a hospital nurse. The housekeeper liked her and so did the owner, and when they found she was going to have a baby they let her stay on, and she had her baby in the local maternity home. The housekeeper always believed that it was Walter’s child, but the girl would not say. She did not want to get married; she wanted to be a nurse. She said that she was taking the baby home for the christening — she came from Evesham way — and she didn’t come back. But the housekeeper had a letter from her long afterwards, thanking her for her goodness and telling her that the girl had realised her ambition and was a nurse. No one knows about my baby,” she said, “but I have seen that he is well looked after.”
She glanced at Brat. He was lying with his eyes on the ceiling, but he appeared to be listening.
“Her name was Mary Woodward. She was an even better nurse than she was a cook. She was killed during the war, taking patients out of a ward to safety in a shelter.”
There was a long silence.
“I seem to have inherited my cooking talents too,” he said; and she could not tell whether the words were bitter or not.
“I was very fond of Walter. He was a dear; very kind. He had only one fault; he had no head for drink, and he liked drink very much. I don’t believe for a moment that Walter knew about the girl. He was the kind who would have rushed to marry her. I think she didn’t want him to know.”
She had another look at Brat. Perhaps she had told him all this too soon; before he was strong enough to be interested. But she had hoped that it would give him an interest in life.
“I’m afraid that is as near as we can get, Brat. But none of us have any doubt about it. Charles took one look at you and said, ‘Walter.’ And I think myself you look a little like your mother. That is Mary Woodward. It was taken in her second year at St. Luke’s.”
She gave him the photograph, and left it with him.
A week or two later she said to Eleanor: “Nell, I’m going to leave you. I’ve taken a lease of Tim Connell’s stud at Kilbarty.”
“Oh, Bee!”
“Not immediately, but when Brat is able to travel.”
“You’re taking Brat there? Oh, yes, of course you must go! Oh, that is a wonderful idea, Bee. It solves such a lot of problems, doesn’t it? But can you afford it? Shall I lend you money for it?”
“No, Uncle Charles is doing that. Lovely to think of Charles supporting horses, isn’t it? You’ll need all you have to pay death duty, my dear. Mr. Sandal has broken it to the Bank that the place belonged to Simon all the time.”
“What shall we do about letting people know about Brat? I mean, about his not being Patrick.”
“I don’t think we’ll have to do anything about it. The facts will inevitably ooze. They always do. I think we just do nothing to prevent the leak. The fact that we are making him part of the family instead of starting prosecutions and things will take a lot of the fun out of it for the scandal-mongers. We’ll survive, Nell. And so will he.”
“Of course we will. And the first time someone mentions it boldly to me, I shall say: ‘My cousin? Yes, he did pretend to be my brother. He is very like Patrick, isn’t he? As if we were discussing cream-cakes.’” She paused a moment and then added: “But I should like the news to get round before I’m too old to marry him.”
“Are you thinking of it?” Bee said, taken aback.
“I’m set on it.”
Bee hesitated; and then decided to let the future take care of itself.
“Don’t worry. It will get round,” she said.
“Now that Uncle Charles is here, and is going to settle down at Latchetts,” she said later to Brat, “I can go back to having a life of my own somewhere else.”
His eyes came away from the ceiling, and watched her.
“There’s a place in Ulster I have my eye on. Tim Connell’s place at Kilbarty.”
She saw his fingers begin to play with the sheet, unhappily.
“Are you going away to Ulster, then?” he asked.
“Only if you will come with me, and run the stable for me.”
The easy tears of the newly-convalescent rose in his eyes and ran down his cheek.
“Oh, Bee!” he said.
“I take it that means that my offer is accepted,” she said.
The End