By the Pricking of My Thumbs Read online

  She presumed she was merely to look for a gravestone that might have been put up commemorating the death of some child of the required age. Most of the graves here were of an older date. They were not very interesting, not old enough to be quaint or to have touching or tender inscriptions. They were mostly of fairly elderly people. Yet she lingered a little as she went along, making mental pictures in her mind. Jane Elwood, departed this life January the 6th, aged 45. William Marl, departed this life January the 5th, deeply regretted. Mary Treves, five years old. March 14th 1835. That was too far back.

  'In thy presence is the fulness of joy.' Lucky little Mary Treves.

  She had almost reached the far wall now. The graves here were neglected and overgrown, nobody seemed to care about this bit of the cemetery. Many of the stones were no longer upright but lay about on the ground. The wall here was damaged and crumbling. In places it had been broken down.

  Being right behind the church, it could not be seen from the road - and no doubt children came here to do what damage they could. Tuppence bent over one of the stone slabs - The original lettering was worn away and unreadable - But heaving it up sideways, Tuppence saw some coarsely scrawled letters and words, also by now partly overgrown.

  She stopped to trace them with a forefinger, and got a word here and there Whoever ... offend... one of these little ones.

  Millstone... Millstone... Millstone... and below - in uneven cutting by an amateur hand:

  Here lies Lily laters.

  Tuppence drew a deep breath - She was conscious of a shadow behind her, but before she could turn her head something hit her on the back of her head and she fell forwards on to the tombstone into pain and darkness.

  CHAPTER 10 A Conference - and After

  'Well, Beresford,' said Major-General Sir Josiah Penn, K.M.G., C.B., D.S.O., speaking with the weight appropriate to the impressive stream of letters after his name. 'Well, what do you think of all that yackety-yack?'

  Tommy gathered by that remark that Old Josh, as he was irreverently spoken of behind his hack, was not impressed with the result of the course of the conferences in which they had been taking part.

  Softly, soffiy catchee monkey,' said Sir Josiah, going on with his remarks. 'A lot of talk and nothing said. If anybody does say anything sensible now and then, about four beanstalks immediately get up and howl it down. I don't know why we come to these things. At least, I do know. I know why I do.

  Nothing else to do. If I didn't come to these shows, I'd have to stay at home. Do you know what happens to me there? I get bullied, Beresford. Bullied by my housekeeper, bullied by my gardener. He's an elderly Scot and he won't so much as let me touch my own peaches. So I come along here, throw my weight about and pretend to myself that I'm performing a useful function, ensuring the security of this country! Stuff and noBsense.

  'What about you? You're a relatively young man. What do you come and waste your time for? Nobody'il listen to you, even if you do say something worth hearing.'

  Tommy, faintly amused that despite his own, as he consi-dered, advanced age, he could be regarded as a youngster by Major-General Sir Josiah Penn, shook his head! The General must be, Tommy thought, considerably past eighty, he was rather deaf, heavily bronchial, but he was nobody's fool.

  'Nothing would ever get done at all if you weren't here, sir,' said Tommy. 'I like to think so,' said the General. 'I'm a toothless bulldog - but I can still bark. How's Mrs Tommy? Haven't seen her for a long time.' Tommy replied that Tuppence was well and active.

  'She was always active. Used to make me think of a dragonfly sometimes. Always darting off after some apparently absurd idea of her own and then we'd fred it wasn't absurd.

  Good fun!' said the General, with approval. 'Don't like these earnest middle-aged women you meet nowadays, all got a Cause with a capital C. And as for the girls nowadays -' he shook his head. 'Not what they used to be when I was a young man. Pretty as a picture, they used to be then. Their muslin frocks! Cloche hats, they used to wear at one time. Do you remember? No, I suppose you'd have been at school. Had to look right down underneath the brim before you could see the girl's face. Tantalizing it was, and they knew it! I remember now - let me see - she was a relative of yours - an aunt wasn't she? - Ada. Ada Fanshawe ' 'Aunt Ada?' 'Prettiest girl I ever knew.' Tommy managed to contain the surprise he felt. That his Aunt Ada could ever have been considered pretty seemed beyond belief. Old Josh was dithering on.

  'Yes, pretty as a picture. Sprightly, too! Gay! Regular tease.

  Ah, I remember last time I saw her. I was a subaltern just off to India. We were at a moonlight picnic on the beach... She and I wandered away together and sat on a rock looking at the sea?

  Tommy looked at him with great interest. At his double chins, his bald head, his bushy eyebrows and his enormous paunch. He thought of Aunt Ada, of her incipient moustache, her grim smile, her iron grey hair, her malicious glance. Time, he thought. What Time does to one! He tried to visualize a handsome young subaltern and a pretty girl in the moonlight.

  He failed.

  'Romantic,' said Sir Josiah Penn with a deep sigh. 'Ah yes, romantic. I would have liked to propose to her that night, but you couldn't propose if you were a subaltern. Not on your pay.

  We'd have had to wait five years before we could be married.

  That was too long an engagement to ask any girl to agree to. Ah well! you know how things happen. I went out to India and it was a long time before I came home on leave. We wrote to one another for a bit, then things slacked off. As it usually happens.

  I never saw her again. And yet, you know, I never quite forgot her. Often thought of her. I remember I nearly wrote to her once, years later. I'd heard she was in the neighbourhood where I was staying with some people. I thought I'd go and see her, ask if I could call. Then I thought to myself "Don't be a damn' fool. She probably looks quite different by now." 'I heard a chap mention her some years later. Said she was one of the ugliest women he'd ever seen. I could hardly believe 'it when I heard him say that, but I think now perhaps I was lucky I never did see her again. What's she doing now? Alive still?' 'No. She died about two or three weeks ago, as a matter of fact,' said Tommy.

  'Did she really, did she really? Yes, I suppose she'd be what now, she'd be seventy-five or seventy-six? Bit older than that perhaps.' 'She was eighty,' said Tommy.

  'Fancy now. Dark-haired lively Ada. Where did she die?

  Was she in a nursing home or did she live with a companion or - she never married, did she?' 'lqo,' said Tommy, 'she.never married. She was in an old ladies' home. Rather a nice one, as a matter of fact. Sunny Ridge, it's called.' 'Yes, I've heard of that. Sunny Ridge. Someone my sister knew was there, I believe. A Mrs - now what was the name a Mrs Carstairs? D'you ever come across her?' 'No. I didn't come across anyone much there. One just used to go and visit one's own particular relative.' 'Difficult business, too, I think. I mean, one never knows what to say to them.' 'Aunt Ada was particularly difficult,' said Tommy. 'She was a tartar, you know.'

  'She would be.' The General chuckled. 'She could be a regular little devil when she liked when she was a girl.'

  He sighed.

  'Devilish business, getlg old. One of my sister's friends used to get fancies, poor old thing. Used to say she'd killed somebody.'

  'Good Lord,' said Tommy. 'Had she?'

  'Oh, I don't suppose so. Nobody seems to think she had. I suppose,' said the General, considering the idea thoughtfully, 'I suppose she might have, you know. If you go about saying things like that quite cheerfully, nobody would believe you, would they? Entertaining thought that, isn't it?'

  'Who did she think she'd killed?'

  'Blessed if I know. Husband perhaps? Don't know who he was or what he was like. She was a widow when we tn'st came to know her. Well,' he added with a sigh, 'sorry to hear about Ada. Didn't see it in the paper. If I had I'd have sent flowers or something. Bunch of rosebuds or something of that kind.

  That's what girls used to wear
on their evening dresses. A bunch of rosebuds on the shoulder of an evening dress. Very pretty it was. I remember Ada had an evening dress - sort of hydrangea colour, mauvy. Mauvy-blue and she had pink rosebuds on it. She gave me one once. They weren't real, of course. Artificial. I kept it for a long time - years. I know,' he added, catching Tommy's eye, 'makes you laugh to think of it, doesn't it. I tell you, my boy, when you get really old and gaga like I am, you get sentimental again. Well, I suppose I'd better toddle off and go back to the last act of this ridiculous show.

  Best regards to Mrs T. when you get home.'

  In the train the next day, Tommy thought back over this conversation, smiling to himself and trying again to picture his redoubtable aunt and the fierce Major-General in their young days.

  'I must tell Tuppence this. It'll make her laugh,' said Tommy. 'I wonder what Tuppence has been doing while I've been away?'

  He smiled to himself. ',l II

  The faithful Albert opened the front door with a beaming smile of welcome.

  'Glad to see you back, sir.' 'I'm glad to be back -' Tommy surrendered his suitcase - 'Where's Mrs Beresford?' 'Not back yet, sir.' 'Do you mean she's away?' 'Been away three or four days. But she'll be back for dinner.

  She rang up yesterday and said so.' 'What's she up to, Albert?' 'I couldn't say, sir. She took the car, but she took a lot of railway guides as well. She might be anywhere, as you might say.' 'You might indeed,' said Tommy with feeling. 'John o' Groat's - or Land's End - and probably missed the connection at Little Dither on the Marsh on the way back. God bless British Railways. She rang up yesterday, you say. Did she say where she was ringing from?' 'She didn't say.' 'What time yesterday was this?' 'Yesterday morning. Before lunch. Just said everything was all fight. She wasn't quite sure of what time she'd get home, but she thought she'd be back well before dinner and suggested a chicken. That do you all fight, sir?' 'Yes,' said Tommy, regarding his watch, 'but she'll have to make it pretty quickly now.' 'I'll hold the chicken back,' said Albert.

  Tommy grinned. 'That's fight,' he said. 'Catch it by the tail.

  How'ye you been, Albert? All well at home?' 'Had a scare of measles - But it's all fight. Doctor says it's only strawberry rash.' 'Good,' said Tommy. He went upstairs, whistling a tune to himself. He went into the bathroom, shaved and washed, strode from there into the bedroom and looked around him. It had that curious look of disoccupancy some bedrooms put on when their owner is away. Its atmosphere was cold and unfriendly. Everything was scrupulously tidy and scrupulously clean. Tommy had the depressed feeling that a faithful dog might have had. Looking round him, he thought it was as though Tuppence had never been. No spilled powder, no book cast down open with its back splayed out.

  'Sir.' It was Albert, standing in the doorway.

  'Well?' 'I'm getting worried about the chicken.' 'Oh damn the chicken,' said Tommy. 'You seem to have that chicken on your nerves.' 'Well, I took it as you and she wouldn't be later than eight.

  Not later than eight, sitting down, I mean.' 'I should have thought so, too,' said Tommy, glancing at his wrist watch. 'Good Lord, is it nearly five and twenty to nine?' 'Yes it is, sir. And the chicken ' 'Oh, come on,' said Tommy, 'you get that chicken out of the oven and you and I'll eat it between us. Serve Tuppence right.

  Getting back well before dinner indeed!' 'Of course some people do eat dinner late,' said Albert. 'I went to Spain once and believe me, you couldn't get a meal before ten o'clock. Ten p.m. I ask you! Heathens?

  'All right,' said Tommy, absentmindedly. 'By the way, have you no idea where she has been all this time?' 'You mean the missus? I dunno, sir. Rushing around, I'd say. Her first idea was going to places by train, as far as I can make out. She was always looking in A.B.C.s and timetables and things.' 'Well,' said Tommy, 'we all have our ways of amusing ourselves, I suppose. Hers seems to have been railway travel. I wonder where she is all the same. Sitting in the Ladies' Waiting Room at Little Dither on the Marsh, as likely as not.' 'She knew as you was coming home today though, didn't she, sir?' said Albert. 'She'll get here somehow. Sure to.' Tommy perceived that he was being offered loyal allegiance.

  He and Albert were linked together in expressing disapprobation of a Tuppence who in the course of her flirtations with

  British Railways was neglecting to come home in time to give a returning husband his proper welcome.

  Albert went away to release the chicken from its possible fate of cremation in the oven.

  Tommy who had been about to follow him, stopped and looked towards the mantelpiece. He walked slowly to it and looked at the picture that hung there. Funny, her being so sure that she had seen that particular house before. Tommy felt quite certain that he hadn't seen it. Anyway, it was quite an ordinary house. There must be plenty of houses like that.

  He stretched up as far as he could towards it and then, still not able to get a good view, unhooked it and took it close to the electric lamp. A quiet, gentle house. There was the artist's signature. The name began with a B though he couldn't make out exactly what the name was. Bosworth - Bouchier - He'd get a magnifying glass and look at k more closely. A merry chime of cowbells came from the hall. Albert had highly approved of the Swiss cowbells that Tommy and Tuppence had brought back some time or other from Grindelwald. He was something of a virtuoso on them. Dinner was served.

  Tommy went to the dining-room. It was odd, he thought, that Tuppence hadn't turned up by now. Even if she had had a puncture, which seemed probable, he rather wondered that she hadn't rung up to explain or excuse her delay.

  'She might know that I'd worry,' said Tommy to himself.

  Not, of come, that he ever did worry - not about Tuppence.

  Tuppence was always all right. Albert contradicted this mood.

  'Hope she hasn't had an accident,' he remarked, presenting Tommy with a dish of cabbage, and shaking his head gloomily.

  'Take that away. You know I hate cabbage,' said Tommy.

  'Why should she have had an accident? It's only half past nine flow.

  'Being on the road is plain murder nowadays,' said Albert.

  'Anyone might have an accident.'

  The telephone bell rang. 'That's her,' said Albert. Hastily reposing the dish of cabbage on the sideboard, he hurried out of the room. Tommy rose, abandoning his plate of chicken, and followed Albert. He was just saying 'Here, I'll take it,' when Albert spoke.

  'Yes, sir? Yes, Mr Bcrcsford is at home, Here he is now.' He turned his head to Tommy. 'It's a Dr Murray for you, sir.' 'Dr Murray?' Tommy thought for a moment. The name seemed familiar but for the moment be couldn't remember who Dr Murray was. If Tuppence had had an accident - and then with a sigh of relief he remembered that Dr Murray had been the doctor who attended the old ladies at Sunny Ridge.

  Something, perhaps, to do with Aunt Ada's funeral forms.

  True child of his time, Tommy immediately assumed that it must be a question of some form or other - something he ought to have signed, or Dr Murray ought to have signed.

  'Hullo,' he said, 'Beresford here.' 'Oh, I'm glad to catch you. You remember me, I hope. I attended your aunt, Miss Fanshawe.' 'Yes, of course I remember. What can I do?' 'I really wanted to have a word or two with you sometime. I don't know if we can arrange a meeting, perhaps in town one day?' 'Oh I expect so, yes. Quite easily. But - er - is it something you can't say over the phone?' 'I'd rather not say it over the telephone. There's no immediate hurry. I won't pretend there is but - but I should like to have a chat with you.' 'Nothing wrong?' said Tommy, and wondered why he put it that way. Why should there be anything wrong?

  'Not really. I may be making a mountain out of a molehill.

  Probably am. But there have been some rather curious developments at Sunny Ridge.' 'Nothing to do with Mrs Lancaster, is it?' asked Tommy.

  'Mrs Lancaster?' The doctor seemed surprised. 'Oh no. She left some time ago. In fact - before your aunt died. This is something quite different.' 'I've been away - only just got back. May I ring you up tomorrow morning - w
e could fix something then.' 'Right. I'll give you my telephone number. I shall be at my surgery until ten a.m.'

  'Bad news?' asked Albert as Tommy returned to the d'ming-

  'For God's sake, don't croak, Albert,' said Tommy irritably.

  'No - of course it isn't bad news.' 'I thought perhaps the missus -' 'She's all right,' said Tommy. 'She always is. Probably gone hating off after some wild-cat clue or other - You know what she's like. I'm not going to worry any more. Take away this plate of chicken - You've been keeping it hot in the oven and it's inedible. Bring me some coffee. And then I'm going to bed.

  'There will probably be a letter tomorrow. Delayed in the post - you know what our posts are like - or there will be a wire from her - or she'll ring up.' But there was no letter next day - no telephone call - no wire.

  Albert eyed Tommy, opened his mouth and shut it again several 6mes, judging quite rightly that gloomy predictions on his part would not be welcomed.