The Knocker On Death's Door Part 9

"I'd better have a word with him, too, I suppose. Though from all accounts he managed to break away some time ago-small blame to him."

"Hasn't slept in this house oftener than about five or six times a year, for years now," Sergeant Moon confirmed, "and then only to please the old lady. But blood's thicker than water, seemingly, when it comes to the point."

George ran up the stone steps, and collided with Hugh at the top. A vivid, distressed face, still slightly travel-stained from the drive home, glared into his. The young man's impetuous rush carried them irresistibly a tread or two backwards down the stairs again, and George gave way obligingly and let himself be persuaded. Hugh saw below him the open dark cavern of the cellar doorway, the lights concentrated in one corner, where two men sifted soil patiently into a bucket, and the rectangle of empty blackness cutting between. A look of total shock, blank almost as unconsciousness, dropped like a mask over his face, and melted into scared and agitated humanity again only with painful slowness. He pressed a few steps lower, against the steadying barrier of George's arm, and looked round at the trestle table and its load, the suitcase closed now, the clothes covered with a piece of sheeting. The heavy, chill odour of disturbed earth hung upon the air and stirred sluggishly at every movement. Hugh's nostrils dilated and quivered like those of a high-mettled horse.

"It's true, then," he said. His tone as unexpectedly flat and practical, as though he had shed his excitement, at any rate for the moment with his uncertainty. "They told me you'd issued a statement-is that right?-that you'd found a body somewhere in the house, Rob said you were down here. I couldn't believe it-I still can't. I don't see how it's possible. It has to be some grisly mistake-or else it's a plant..."

"By the police, you mean?" George asked mildly.

"No, I didn't mean that-but d.a.m.n it, even if I did, please remember that's no more incredible to you than your version is to me." Hugh's eyes flared again; one of them he had rubbed with fingers lightly soiled by grease, and unwittingly awarded himself a black eye which gave him a curiously youthful and disarming appearance. "I wish to h.e.l.l I'd been here."

"I wish you had, but it wouldn't have altered events at all," George said reasonably, "apart from being a comfort and encouragement to your family, of course. As for what you call our version, we haven't one. We're confronted with a series of realities. The pattern is obscure, and we're not in the habit of jumping to conclusions too soon."

"Come off it!" said Hugh shortly. "You've questioned my brother, you've cautioned him, you've dug up the floors in his house, and you try to tell me he's not under suspicion of anything? And I tell you straight, if it's a choice between believing Robert's done anything wrong, and believing the police are liars, I know which I'll take. That's another for your series of realities! But there could be other people with an interest in planting bodies where they don't belong..."

"Such as the murderer?"

"Or murderers."

"And entry to this house is so easy?"

"Criminals manage to get in wherever they want to get in urgently enough, don't they?" He was arguing fiercely and intelligently now, but there was something in his eyes all the time that said he was fighting a rearguard action, and in his heart knew it very well. "I've heard of houses robbed while the whole d.a.m.n' family were gawping at the telly. And out out of anywhere they want to urgently enough, too-like prison, for instance. Don't tell me n.o.body could ever, in any circ.u.mstances break in here and have the whole night to himself. Just two people sleeping in the house, and walls a foot thick! And as far as I know that cellar was never locked-there was nothing in it, so n.o.body went there much..." of anywhere they want to urgently enough, too-like prison, for instance. Don't tell me n.o.body could ever, in any circ.u.mstances break in here and have the whole night to himself. Just two people sleeping in the house, and walls a foot thick! And as far as I know that cellar was never locked-there was nothing in it, so n.o.body went there much..."

"Believe it or not," said George patiently, "we even think of things like that. Also of simple possibilities like lost keys being copied, or houses occasionally being let or loaned while the family is away on holiday. And now you're here, maybe you'll be able to help us about things like that. If you'll wait for about ten minutes, upstairs in the drawing-room, one of us will come and join you, and we'll examine the outside possibilities."

They were all watching him, even the two men inside the cellar, all with closed faces but sympathetic eyes. There was nothing he could do but retreat, since nothing which had been found here could now be canceled out. He looked with doubt, distaste and apprehension at the draped table and the closed case, and again at the cave of the cellar. He shook his head helplessly and wretchedly.

"You see see it, and it still isn't credible! I can't get it into my head at all." He frowned abstractedly, and hauled out his handkerchief to wipe from his knuckles the smudge of oil he had just detected there. "Can I go in? I've almost forgotten what it's like-I haven't been in there for years." it, and it still isn't credible! I can't get it into my head at all." He frowned abstractedly, and hauled out his handkerchief to wipe from his knuckles the smudge of oil he had just detected there. "Can I go in? I've almost forgotten what it's like-I haven't been in there for years."

"If you want to. Be careful how you go!"

The two constables squatting over the slowly diminis.h.i.+ng mound of soil and the sieve looked up momentarily as he came in, and having withdrawn their eyes from the brightness on which they had been concentrating, saw only a tall, dark figure cutting off the light from the doorway, a deeper shadow added to what was already obscurity. He was at the edge of the trench almost before he realised it, and pulled up sharply with a hissing, indrawn breath, recoiling with one hand outstretched for balance until he touched the wall. He stared down into the hole, and George, close behind him in the doorway, felt rather than saw his s.h.i.+vering. When George took him gently by the elbow and turned him again towards the light of day, he yielded to the suggestion docilely, and allowed himself to be steered to the foot of the staircase.

"Take it from me, we don't go to that sort of trouble except with good reason."

"No-I believe you!" He was quaking gently with shock and revulsion, and drawing in deep, hungry breaths of slightly milder, cleaner air. With a foot on the lowest tread of the stairs he turned a grimly thoughtful face.

"Who was he?-this man you found?"

"So far he remains unidentified," said George.

"Well, whoever he is, he can't can't be anything to do with us." be anything to do with us."

"In that case, time will show as much. Now we'd like your help in a while, but just now we have some loose ends to tie up here. If you'll wait upstairs-Why not go up and see your mother in the meantime?"

Hugh departed, once his mind was made up, as impetuously as he had arrived. They stood listening as his crisp, almost angry footsteps receded along the hall above towards the stairs, changed tone on the broad oak treads, and climbed out of earshot.

"And now," said George briskly, "I want the best roadmap you can find at short notice, Jack, for Lancas.h.i.+re and the north. And Brice, there's a special job for you right here, while I'm away."

CHAPTER 11.

IT was approaching noon as George drove up the M6, with the map spread on the pa.s.senger seat beside him, and Kirkheal Moor heavily underlined, for fear he should never be able to find it again. According to the directories it was a small market town in one of Lancas.h.i.+re's surprising islands of rural peace, shrunken now but still individual between the city complexes; on the map it was printed so small as to be almost invisible. So much the better: perhaps the electoral roll would be modest enough to be easily combed, perhaps the place would be so much of a survival that the postmaster or the vicar would know everyone who lived there, and where to put his finger on him.

He should, no doubt, have borrowed a driver who had been in bed overnight; motorways were not for people who had gone short of sleep. But police resources were never large enough, and there was still a lot to be done at Mottisham; and there were no rested men to spare. George tanked up with coffee, drove fast but steadily, and kept his mind as well as his eyes on the road.

He had consigned the Abbey to Brice's care. Collins would be withdrawing himself and all his acc.u.mulated notes to the vicarage office, and if he got through all the conceivable checking and re-checking of reports before evening he would have done well. Brice's squad had still to sift and replace all the soil removed from the floor; and its other main job was the gun. Brice just might have enough manpower to search the whole house for it before night; he had begun already before George left. It was more than dubious whether they would find it, of course, there had been some years to dispose of it, but they must at least make sure it was not in the Abbey. Hugh, questioned as to whether there had ever been a gun in the house, had candidly listed the good sporting guns which had quit the walls one by one as the money ran out, and had had vague recollections that his father had brought back some sort of minor souvenir from North Africa at the end of the war, but had not the least idea what had happened to it-probably that had been sold, too, if it had any cash value-and didn't remember seeing it for years. It was typical of Robert, senior, that he had had a very das.h.i.+ng war record indeed, though too picaresque and irregular to raise him higher than major; and also typical, and one of the better things about him, that he had shed the "major" as soon as he shed his uniform, and refused to acknowledge such a form of address ever after.

As for Robert, junior, careworn and remote, withdrawn for much of the time into his mother's bedroom, he had declined to answer questions about guns as he had declined to answer questions about bodies in the cellar. His eyes and his manner said that he knew everything; but his tongue stated monotonously that he had nothing to say.

So there was George, heading north through Ches.h.i.+re and thanking G.o.d for the motorways which had enabled the police, as well as the criminals, to cover long distances with the minimum of effort; while at the back of his mind lingered the anxieties Sergeant Brice had to deal with in his absence. All the men now on duty in the Abbey had been working without respite for more than twenty-four hours, and would be clocking up several hours more before they could go home and sleep. So we quit the Abbey this evening, George had ordered. Seal the cellar, find the gun if you can, ask any questions that may occur to you, but at the end of the day send the lot of them home to get a proper break. n.o.body's going to run, not while the old lady is so ill. And we have enough fresh men to mount a watch on the front and rear approaches to the house, which is all that should be necessary.

In the meantime-he was sweeping past the exit for the Keele service area at the time, and wondering about another coffee and a 'phone call home-there was the ghost of Robert, senior, whispering all the time at his shoulder. People had loved and admired that Robert-not having to live with him, of course, but just seeing him stride across the horizon in his own decorative fas.h.i.+on, safely at a distance. People had also hated him, people who had suffered from him or for him, people who had been forced to come to close quarters, instead of idolising from a distance. What was the truth about him? And why, above all, why should the unknown man from the cellar be carrying, safely secreted with his most precious possessions, a notice of this Mids.h.i.+re squire's death? Clearly this had somehow come to his notice-no great wonder, for the Echo Echo covered a third of England and two-thirds of Wales-and had brought him to the Abbey. Plus, don't forget, a substantial sum of money, a large suitcase full of clothes, and a valid pa.s.sport, brand-new just as Robert, senior, staged his spectacular death. A little man, discreetly on the run with what he had. And showing up at the Abbey in the hope of more? But on what grounds? What hold could an obituary give him over Robert's heirs? And did he know how little there actually was for them to inherit? covered a third of England and two-thirds of Wales-and had brought him to the Abbey. Plus, don't forget, a substantial sum of money, a large suitcase full of clothes, and a valid pa.s.sport, brand-new just as Robert, senior, staged his spectacular death. A little man, discreetly on the run with what he had. And showing up at the Abbey in the hope of more? But on what grounds? What hold could an obituary give him over Robert's heirs? And did he know how little there actually was for them to inherit?

It became more and more clear to him, as he pulsed steadily northwards through the monstrous landscape of the M6, in some stretches of which new bridges produced the only glimpses of beauty, that the date of that obituary- which Sergeant Collins might at this very moment be checking-could not be far removed from the date of T.J. Claybourne's death. There was a direct connection. But what it was he could not conceive.

He stopped at the service station at Knutsford, and called Bunty at home. She was used to waiting around, in so far as one ever gets used to it. She rea.s.sured and reinvigorated as she always did, giving little sign of the rea.s.surance for which she herself had been waiting. There is a technique that makes life under these conditions easier, and Bunty had it. She even contrived to provide news that was like a shot in the arm.

"Dominic phoned. He's been doing some thinking, apparently. Or perhaps not thinking, only reacting emotionally. He says he wants to go and put in a year at least of voluntary service in India. That's the influence of k.u.mar and his Swami, of course, but he means it. And he could do worse."

"With a degree like his?"

"Well, that can only be a bonus, can't it? Whatever he does!"

George rang off, astonis.h.i.+ngly refreshed. How like Bunty to be able to recall to him a world outside Middlehope, that narrow, deep, archaic cleft in the border hills, in itself a world. Everything advanced or receded into due proportion, in one single world this time. He felt enlarged, and at the same time acutely concentrated on the thing he had in hand.

He called the Abbey. Constable Barnes answered, vast and calm, and called Sergeant Brice to the line.

"I'm glad you made contact," said Brice, expansive with relief. He was young and bright and anxious, grateful for the delegation of responsibility, but even more grateful for continued interest and supervision. "We did find something else-the cap off a gold pencil or pen, I don't know which, but it's gold, an expensive one and not an ultra-modern type, could be as much as ten years back when it was designed. No, not in the soil-heap-in the pit itself."

"Where in the pit?" asked George.

"Bout amids.h.i.+ps, slightly to the left when entering. We've stuck a marker in the place."

"Good, that was wise. Just hold the thing, don't clean it up at all, wrap it and hold it. And I'll tell you what you can do-try it on Robert, see if he recognises it. Don't press him, just notice his reaction that's all. If you can let any of the squad go before evening, do. I hope to be back in time to make the dispositions for the night myself. And go home yourself when you've got the other clear. If I need to contact you, I'll call you there."

He replaced the receiver and started back to the car, among the hectic comings and going of hundreds of vehicles and thousands of people. Well, well, who would have thought a queer impulse like that would have paid off? What you need in this racket, he thought, clambering in and slamming the door, is lots of patience and lots of slack, to let people run or linger, as they choose, until they trip themselves up in their own cleverness. And their own over-anxiety! Also, of course, a morsel of luck.

But still he did not understand why why!

He left the M6 at exit number 23, the A580 between Manchester and Liverpool, left that again at Moss Bank and went up into the white roads that veered bleakly towards the moors. He had the impression he always had after using the motorways, of having traversed several kingdoms in the twinkling of an eye, and being astray now in a land where he did not even know the language. And then he was in the uplands, and suddenly it was all familiar, Middlehope all over again, an ingrowing survival from pre-industrial and early-industrial society, an enclosed and private place. And that was Kirkheal Moor. Clearly it was, technically, a town. It had a distinct centre, with church, open square, market-enclosure and shops. But minute, hardly bigger than a village. There was one new estate, but so small as to indicate in itself the hopelessness of enlargement until one of the surrounding towns reached and engulfed, like a swollen sea, this island of the past. And there were four distinct streets, shooting outwards from the square, and a maze of little lanes and alleyways linking them in every direction. Perhaps six or seven thousand souls in all, counting the outlying farms, the bleak sheep-pastures on the moors that swelled on all sides, even the high mosses where solitary souls cut peat. And all practically within gunshot of Liverpool!

So the end of his journey was incredibly like the beginning. He had made a loop in s.p.a.ce-time, and arrived at the very point of his departure. Parking his car in the square, he realised that it could not have been otherwise, that the uncanny relations.h.i.+p was what had made this whole adventure possible, though as yet he did not understand how.

He had luck, for there was only one Claybourne in the local telephone directory. Perhaps the name was not native here. So much the better for him. Possibly even this one would not have possessed a telephone but for being in business in a small way. What he found, in one of the streets radiating from the square, was a little grocery shop with one narrow, crowded window, so stacked up with tins and packets that it was difficult to see between them, and the diminutive interior had to get its light mainly from the glazed door. An overalled girl, lank-haired and indifferent, was wiping out the interior of the gla.s.s-topped counter. She looked at George dully when he asked for Mrs. Claybourne, and then turned without a word and went away through the curtained door at the rear of the shop. Mrs. R. Claybourne, the directory entry had said, which argued that there was no Mr. Claybourne, and the business belonged to the lady.

The girl drifted back into the shop, still wordless, followed by a slender, erect dark woman in a black dress and a lilac nylon overall. She must have been well into her sixties, slightly dry and withered now, with grey in the dark, abundant hair, but she brought in with her the instant impact of past beauty. Only afterwards was George aware of other impressions she carried unmistakably about with her: of immense and conscious rect.i.tude, complete self-sufficiency and universal suspicion of everyone else. Not a comfortable woman to live with or work with now, but what she might once have been lingered in the chilly remains of striking good looks.

"I'm Mrs. Claybourne. You wanted to see me?"

"My name is Felse. If you can spare me a quarter of an hour or so of your time, I should be very grateful. It's important."

She studied him in silence for a moment, her fine dark eyes narrowed. Then, without any questions, she opened the house door wide, and said: "Come in!"

He had not expected so prompt an entry, but even less was he expecting the first remark she addressed to him, without preamble, as soon as they were safely shut into her neat front room, among the polished bra.s.s and the pot plants insidiously creeping round the walls: "You're police, aren't you?" Not ashamed, not bitter, just bluntly practical. "Not that you're all that typical, I suppose, but who else could you be? What's he wanted for now?"

"I take it you're referring to your son." There was not much doubt of it; the startled face in the pa.s.sport photograph bore a certain resemblance to hers, the eyes specially were her signature. "Thomas J. Claybourne."

"Thomas Jeremiah," she said flatly, and sat down in one of the glossily polished chairs. "Tom after his dad, Jeremiah after mine. He was a good man, my dad, church-warden for thirty years, and honest as the day. Many a time I've been right glad he died the year after I got married. Better that than live to know what we were coming down to. But I've got nothing to hide, and never have had. Them that will go to the devil must go alone, I'll abide the same as I always have, in my dad's way. So don't think I'm ever likely to be hiding him here from your kind. What is it he's done this time?"

George sat down opposite her, and drew out the pa.s.sport from his wallet, and handed it to her, open at the photograph. "Is this a picture of your son? And these details, are they correct?"

She took the little book curiously in her hands, turning it to look at the cover. She had never seen a pa.s.sport before, much less owned one; she would never in her life have any use for such a flighty thing. "That's him, all right. Well, I never did! I never thought he meant it when he talked about emigrating."

"He never got as far as that," said George, and felt in his pocket for the one object he had taken from the body itself, a deplorable remnant which had once been a clean, folded handkerchief. The fact of being so neatly and tightly folded inside the lined breast pocket had preserved at least its inner portions, and these had been turned outwards now to conceal the worst, and expose the small initials in Indian ink on the hem, TC. "Can you also identify this as his property? No, don't take it out of the plastic envelope, just look at it."

"Doesn't need much looking," she said firmly. "I marked six of these for him, the last time he was here." She looked up at George. Her eyes were shrewd, and the lines of her face hard as nails; perhaps she had had to be hard to survive. "I always did my duty by him when he chose to remember he was my son. Whether he ever paid his way or not, whether he ever gave a d.a.m.n for me or not, and whether or not I stopped caring about him, either, when he came I fed him and housed him and mended his clothes. Not for love! Only for duty. He always walked out again as soon as it suited him-as soon as your people quit looking for him and his mates, I shouldn't wonder, but I never asked him anything. When he went, he went. Like his dad before him, who cleared off without a word two years after we were married, and never showed his face here again. I'm not bothered, they're neither of them much loss. I get along best alone. Men who walk out on me I don't follow. This is my place, and here I stay, where I'm independent and respected." She looked down again, narrowly, at the small plastic packet in her steely fingers, and asked in the same uncompromising voice: "What happened to him? He's dead, isn't he?"

George told her the bare facts. No one was going to be embarra.s.sed by this woman's tears, or feel obliged to try and comfort her. The mention of Mids.h.i.+re and Mottisham clearly meant nothing to her; but she knew her responsibilities.

"You'll be wanting me to ident.i.ty the body, I suppose. Tomorrow's closing day, I could come down then. And I suppose there'll have to be an inquest before I can get to bury him?" She knew her duty. There was even something admirable in her acceptance of it, after all affection had been drained away out of her blood.

''I don't think it will be necessary for you to see the body. If you can tell us who his doctor was, and in particular his dentist, the medical evidence will take care of that. But your help would be invaluable in identifying his belongings. And there's money which will probably be reclaimable, and which must be yours unless he had a wife."

She shrugged, but rather resignedly than coldly. She was not in the least interested in his money. "No, he never married. Too restless, always on the move, job to job and place to place ever since he was eighteen. I gave him money when he needed it. He never came unless he did."

"Tell me about him. It might help us to find out what he was doing in our part of the country, and who could have killed him."

"What is there to tell you? I brought him up alone, and I brought him up good, and let me tell you, that isn't easy on your own. But he took after his dad, not after me. Come the time he was seventeen, I never knew where he was, and he'd had three jobs and wrecked the lot. And at eighteen he went off with some smart-aleck friend of his, and I didn't see him for three years. Three or four times your folks came here asking after him, but always when he wasn't here. Whether he did all the things they think he did, I don't know. Far as I know, he only went to gaol once, and that was for some sort of fraud, not a big thing-he got six months. I don't make any secret of it, I'm responsible for my record, not his, and there isn't the man born that can say I've done him out of a farthing. I tend my own garden. He let his run wild. Twice he took money from me, besides what I gave him. I knew that. I never said nothing that was between him and me, and what never touched a soul besides I forgave him. He wasn't cruel or vicious. He wasn't even bad. Only feeble and s.h.i.+ftless and wanting it to come easy."

As an epitaph, in her pa.s.sionless voice, it was not so harsh as it might have been; and now her eyes, so dark and full and meant to be sensuous, had a curious measured softness in the unchanged marble hardness of her face. And George thought, if only somebody could have got her out of here, and stirred her deeply enough to make her forget the narrow, cold springs of her own righteousness, what a woman this could have been!

"And when was the last time you saw him?"

"Oh, about five years ago. It was round about the thaw, as I remember, February or March it would be. He came on the quiet, without a word beforehand, like he always did, and after dark, the way I thought he must have been mixed up in something shady and wanting to lie low. But he never told me anything about his affairs. Still, that was the only time he talked about emigrating. Tried to borrow some more money off me, but I hadn't got it to give him, and a gift it would have been, loans to him always were. I don't know, he may just have felt like getting out and starting fresh somewhere else, I can't say it wasn't so. But what I thought was that the police were after him for something, and he needed pretty bad to get out. If I'd had more, I'd have given it. But now you tell me he had money."

"If he meant to go abroad, he needed all he could get. And he never said anything to you about a place called Mottisham? Or a family named Macsen-Martel? Nothing to indicate why he should go to Mids.h.i.+re at all?"

"I never heard mention in my life of any such people," she said, "or any such place. He never told me anything. He was too afraid I might tell the truth if I was asked."

It seemed that she had told him everything she knew, and there was nothing more to be discovered here, unless through the man's police record. She would come down by the motorway coach tomorrow, report at the Comerbourne headquarters address George had given her, and look without flinching at the remnants of her son's property, even at his body if need be; and she would take away the remains, once the coroner had issued a burial certificate, and station the sanct.i.ty of a notable funeral like a sign of the cross between her sorry child and his d.a.m.nation. And George could believe that she would be victorious.

She was showing him out, with commanding dignity, when the whole case suddenly opened again like a miraculous flower blooming by violent stages in a trick film. From where he had been sitting, his view had commanded three quarters of the whole room, but not the section at his back, on the left of the doorway. As Mrs. Claybourne went to open the door, she halted briefly and nodded in that direction. There was a ma.s.sive china cabinet in the corner there, its top scattered with home-crocheted lacey doyleys, and sporting a large wedding-photograph as centre-piece.

"Him I blame," she said, flas.h.i.+ng the first dark fire George had seen in her. "If I blame," she said, flas.h.i.+ng the first dark fire George had seen in her. "If he'd he'd been different, everything would have been different." been different, everything would have been different."

George followed her burning glance to the photograph, and felt the short hairs rise like hackles on his neck. Forty years old if it was a day, that photograph, with the bride in a big picture hat and flounced, low-waisted, garden-party dress, the groom in a dark suit and a silk cravat, and both half-obscured by the lilies and carnations of the bouquet; forty years old, but cherished and kept in the shade, and still unfaded. George went a step or two nearer, to confirm what already needed no confirmation.

The woman was a beauty, cream, roses and jet flushed with joy, without a line of hardness in her face, only a little gawky and a little possessive in the day of her triumph. The man was a different creature, accomplished, exuberant, gay, with a crest of fair hair and a blinding smile. Hardly a photograph of him existed in which he was not laughing, and the laugh was memorable. No wonder even an obituary photograph thirty-five years later had still been recognisable; this was a face that did not change even when it aged.

Mrs. Claybourne's errant husband was identical with that well-known Mids.h.i.+re landowner and sportsman, deceased in the hunting-field, Robert Macsen-Martel, senior.

George swallowed a hasty sandwich and coffee at a pub, and drove back down the M6 in the darkening evening, with all and more than he had come north to find.

No want of motives now, no lack of a link between all these diverse elements.

He had married her! This was the wildest of all. Not just a fast affair, like all the rest, not just a backstairs or coppice seduction, but a cast-iron, unbreakable, unquestionable marriage. George had even gone so far as to confirm it from the church registers, so incredible did it seem. In May 1929, Robert Macsen-Martel had married Rachel Bowman; under a false name, of course, but that did not invalidate the marriage. Mrs. Claybourne and n.o.body else had been his wife. For this marriage was four years prior to the acknowledged one in Mids.h.i.+re, to his ageing and unattractive cousin with the money, and six years before the birth of the first of his supposedly legitimate sons.

It was a thunderbolt. Why had he done it? Seduce her, yes, inevitably and joyously, but why marry her? He had been younger then, of course, already a roamer and already prodigal with his casual favours. It could even have been when he was in flight from some too importunate Middlehope girl that he had wandered up into these parts under an a.s.sumed name, and loitered even after the coast was clear again because of Rachel's bright eyes. But she couldn't have been such a completely new experience to him, why go so far as to marry her? Why get caught? The answer, of course, was there plain to be seen. Rachel had been the one he couldn't get any other way. No marriage, no Rachel. She had had a highly moral upbringing, was as religious as her churchwarden father, and as narrow; and more, she had her affections under control, and was not going to be swept off her moral course by love. Robert had wanted her, what Robert wanted Robert must have, and as quickly as possible, and there was only one way of getting Rachel. She had indeed been remarkably beautiful, maybe he had been genuinely in love at the time. Maybe he had always been genuinely in love-at the time! But there was that streak of ign.o.ble caution even in this act of his-he had been careful to retain the protection of his a.s.sumed name, and keep a back door open into his real ident.i.ty, into which he could escape at need. As he had done, after he had exhausted the possibilities of pleasure with her, and begun to discover the drawbacks. Probably he had never thought of it as a permanent thing at all, just an interlude for which he had to pay slightly more than for most of its kind.

And she, seemingly, had by then begun to discover the drawbacks in him, too, for when he had finally walked quietly out on her she had been relieved, if anything, to be rid of him. Too proud to follow or look for him she might have been, but she had also been too comfortable. Her father had died within the first year of her marriage, the shop was hers, and a better breadwinner than ever Robert had shown signs of being. And above all, unlike her son, she was one of those who have deep roots and do not drag them up merely for an unreliable man.

None of which altered the fact that she had been his legal wife, and was now his legal widow.

And after the wandering husband, the wandering son, taking after his father, coming home when he wanted something, or when he had made some other place too hot to hold him. And just when it was apparently most urgent that he should get out of the country, just when he was trying to borrow or beg more money from his mother to supplement what he had already managed to sc.r.a.pe together, Robert senior broke his neck in the hunting-field, and rated an obituary and a picture in the Echo Echo, in an issue which his son happened to see. What a weapon he must have thought he'd acquired. Here was he, prior to those two sons there in Mids.h.i.+re, and there they were just coming into their father's property, ripe and ready to be milked. So he had gone to Mottisham Abbey, armed with his proofs, either to claim his rights or to extort money. In view of his circ.u.mstances, probably to extort money to help him overseas. And he had gone un.o.btrusively, because he was not anxious to be noticed by the police; so un.o.btrusively that he had been able to vanish without raising a ripple or being missed by a living soul. How could he know how little there was to claim? The obituary made the Abbey sound imposing, the family old, prominent and respected. And in fact wealth is relative, and impoverished though the Macsen-Martels might be by their own standards, what was left still represented more than many people have to bless themselves with. People have been killed for less-to get it or to keep it.

But there was more to preserve in this case than mere inheritance. He couldn't know into what a hornets' nest he was venturing. All that pride of place and blood, and then suddenly this unthinkably bitter and comic revelation at the end of it, and the boys b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! A word almost meaningless in these days, yes-but not to such people as Mrs. Macsen-Martel.

Claybourne had said nothing to his mother about his discovery. Why stir up old mud just when what he wanted most was to get quietly away? No, much better leave her in ignorance. George had said nothing to her, either. The first essential now was to get back to Mottisham as fast as possible, and do what was necessary. Explanations could come afterward.

CHAPTER 12.

SERGEANT Brice withdrew his team from the cellar as soon as the last of the soil had been sieved, leaving it still piled against the rear wall. None had been returned to the trench since the fragment of gold pencil had been found, in case the site of the discovery should be significant. All the finds had now been removed; the flagstones were left propped in the antechamber, neatly in order, and the cellar door closed and sealed. So much for that part of the job in hand.

But they had not found the gun.

"There's the old lady's room," said Reynolds. "But we can't touch that, not now. The doctor's been again. She's bad. We can't possibly disturb her."

They had looked everywhere else but there, creeping quietly about the first floor in order not to be heard in the sick-room. Robert, going in and out with the doctor, had pa.s.sed by them in the corridors as if they did not exist, intent only on his own responsibilities. When he was cornered and made to acknowledge the solidity of Brice, below in the hall after the doctor's car had departed, he was seen to drag himself out of his exclusive preoccupation with a convulsive effort and a s.h.i.+vering shock, like a sleep-walker rudely startled into wakefulness.