Quincunx

  Bissett suddenly said: “Did you open them shutters, Master Johnnie?”

  “No,” I said and then felt myself blushing at my words. But it wasn’t a lie for I had not meant to leave them unfastened and besides, it occurred to me, if I were to explain that I had heard voices I would have to tell the whole story and expose my mother and myself to the threat the man had made.

  There were many questions that could be left to the morning, but the one that had to be decided now was that of the dispositions for the remainder of the night. There was some discussion of whether Mr Pimlott should be summoned to keep guard, but since even the redoubtable Bissett was reluctant to venture the few yards to his house, the scheme was abandoned in favour of other precautions. Mrs Belflower announced that she would go back to her bed but leave her door open.

  “Let me stay with you,” I said to my mother.

  “There’s no call for that,” Bissett put in. “I’ll watch the rest of the night, but I’ll warrant they’ll not come back. And if you take him, we shall have all that to-do over again of getting him to sleep on his own.”

  “No we shan’t,” I protested.

  “I think nurse is right, dearest. You’ll be quite safe here now.”

  “Why do you always do what she says?” I demanded.

  “I don’t,” she said, blushing slightly. “Very well, I suppose one night won’t hurt.” And so, despite Bissett’s forebodings, she took me back to her bed for the remainder of the night.

  When I awoke the next morning it seemed perfectly natural that I should be in my mother’s bed. As usual she had already risen and as I pulled back the curtains and looked round the chamber I saw that everything was as always, and yet seemed unfamiliar: the clothes-press and wash-stand stood where they always did and on the dressing-table was the beautiful japanned box with its picture of a tiger-hunt and the silver clasps at the corners like claws. Then suddenly the events of the night came flooding back and I remembered that the room seemed unfamiliar because I no longer slept there.

  As I came down the stairs some minutes later I started at the sound of a man’s voice, but when I reached the hall I saw that it was Mr Emeris. He was bent with considerable dignity over the lock and the bolts on the street-door. Even in this position he cut a magnificent figure in his brown great-coat with its gold braiding, his dark plush knee-breeches, and tri-corn hat, and with his truncheon dangling from his belt. As village-constable, beadle (in which capacity and carrying a different staff of office, he ushered the other gentle-folks into their pews on Sundays) and sexton, he was a complete parish administration in himself. While I sat at breakfast with my mother in the parlour, I could hear his deep slow tones in the hall murmuring on in a steady, reassuring growl against the voices of Bissett and Mrs Belflower.

  “The burglar seems not to have taken anything,” my mother told me. “Last night Bissett found two silver candlesticks near the front door that he must have dropped while he was trying to get out, but nothing else seems to be missing.”

  “Oh good. We frightened him away before he had time.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “That might be so.”

  At that moment there was a knock at the door and Mr Emeris entered backwards, opening the door as little as was necessary to admit his large frame and drawing it to immediately behind him, saying to someone in the hall: “I’ll have you say that again later, mistress, thank you kindly.”

  He shook his head and sighed as he removed his hat and seated himself, at my mother’s invitation, on the sopha.

  “Have you come to any conclusions, Mr Emeris?”

  “I reckon I’ve about puzzled it out, ma’am,” he answered with composure.

  “Don’t you want to know what I saw?” I cried. For I wanted my moment of importance even though I was determined to conceal the most interesting part of my experience.

  “Why I’ve heerd that already from your mither and Mrs Bissett,” he answered. “Now the way I see it, ma’am, is this: he knowed that ladder had been left there. Now Mrs Bissett has told me about one of the slaters, Job Greenslade, as has been workin’ on the roof. It seems he keeps company with your help-maiden, Sukey Podger.”

  “I can’t believe Sukey could have been involved!”

  “You can’t argue with hard evidence, ma’am. I found summat outside the winder in the airey.”

  With a theatrical gesture indicating that we would have to rein back our curiosity, he stood up and went out as my mother and I looked at each other in surprise. When he returned a moment later Bissett, who had been lurking in the hall and obviously ambushed him, came in with him. He was carrying something and my heart missed a beat as I looked at it for it was a mole-spade and the twin brother of the one Mr Pimlott had been using the day before.

  “See this, ma’am,” cried Bissett, snatching it from him and brandishing it like an angry Roundhead with a pike-staff; “this is a slater’s tool!”

  “Now, now, Mrs Bissett,” the constable said reproachfully, retrieving his piece of evidence. “This is my business, if you please. Now it seems, ma’am, as Job Greenslade and your gal Sukey has been seed often and often at night in the village.”

  Bissett added: “Almost every night.”

  “In view of that and the ladder being left there and this tool and all, I reckon I’ve got enough to lay an information against him before a Justice and have him took up.”

  I had been listening with growing dismay for I knew and liked the young slater: “But it wasn’t Job!” I exclaimed.

  “Why, Master Johnnie, you said you didn’t see the man proper so how could you know?” Bissett said quickly.

  I dared not admit the truth, but another objection occurred to me: “But Mrs Belflower saw the man and she would have recognised him if it had been Job.”

  Bissett and the constable exchanged looks at this and he said: “When you’re as old as I am, young genel’man, you’ll know as things ain’t always so simple as they appear.”

  “That’s right,” Bissett said. “Mrs Belflower’s too partial to that gal by half. And to young Greenslade, too.”

  “I cannot believe it was Job,” my mother declared. “You really don’t think, Mr Emeris, that it was the tramper who came begging yesterday?”

  “I do not. It were jist chance that he happened to come by that same arternoon. And only consider, ma’am, the fambly what that gal come from.”

  “Aye,” Bissett put in, “and as you’ve jist said, Mr Emeris, she was seed last night with Job. And she was out all night.”

  At that moment we heard a banging at the back-door. Mr Emeris and Bissett exchanged glances and as she made for the door he said: “Don’t let her speak to Mrs Belflower.”

  She returned with Sukey who was red-eyed and exhausted and now looked stunned at finding herself brought before the majestic embodiment of the Law.

  “I’m sorry I stayed out so long, ma’am,” she said timidly. “You see, uncle was took bad (and aunt is poorly, as you know) so I was up all night with him till my sister come up.”

  “Oh Sukey, it’s nothing to do with that,” my mother began.

  Mr Emeris held up his hand warningly: “If you’ll be good enough to let me examine her, ma’am.”

  At this word Sukey visibly blenched. However, frightened as she was and the more so as she gradually realized what was being charged against her and Job, she remained unshaken in her assertion that she had gone directly to Hougham and had stayed there until just now. Even Bissett’s attempts to break this story down were unavailing, though she reduced the girl to tears. And so Mr Emeris had to concede that the evidence against her and Job was inadequate to justify seeking a warrant yet — though he remained convinced of the guilt of at least the latter and sure that he would succeed in proving it once he had shewn the tool to Mr Limbrick and examined Job himself.

  The sun was shining from a clear sky when, early that afternoon, we left the house, my mother in a white walking-gown and straw bonnet against the sun and I in m
y white beaver hat and pale blue frock-coat. We set out towards the centre of the village and after a few minutes passed the little old church with its big, untended graveyard. The smoke ascended straight up into the blue sky from the low-browed cottages with their dark little windows.

  As we walked we discussed the great event and my mother repeated her belief that the burglar had been the tramper.

  “If I see him again,” I vowed, “I’ll hold onto him and shout for Mr Emeris.”

  She suddenly stopped and said anxiously: “Promise me, Johnnie, that you’ll never speak to anyone you don’t know?”

  “But there never are any strangers in the village.” I added bitterly, glancing to our right: “That’s why the inn has shut down its livery-stables.”

  Almost opposite the church stood the village’s only inn, an old, half-timbered building which seemed to lean into the road as if peering sideways for possible customers. And so it might well have done, for now that the turnpike was finished that took the high road half a mile away from the village, no travellers ever stopped there and it had sunk to the status of a mere public-house. The carriages that had rattled through the village on their way to change horses there until a year ago were no more than a dim but glorious memory for me now.

  “Can you read the sign?” my mother asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “The Rose and Crab.” Then I had to admit: “But I’m not really reading it because I know what it says, though I would recognise the ‘R’ and, of course, the ‘C’ even if I didn’t know that that was what they were. If you see what I mean.”

  When, long ago, I had asked my mother why the inn had such a strange name, she had suggested that the crab referred to was the type of apple. However, the painting on the sign was so weather-worn (and its limner so maladroit) that although the rose was clearly recognisable, the object beside it might have been anything, and I liked to believe that it represented the sinister and spider-like sea-creature rather than the familiar fruit.

  “You’ll soon be able to read properly,” my mother said and we discussed this as we passed through the centre of the village. From this point the houses began to thin out again, and a stream ran along the right-hand side of the road as it descended towards the Green which now lay before us, a wide meadow with houses all round it and a muddy pond in the middle. Our quickest way would have been to keep on towards our right along its edge by way of Silver-street where I knew Sukey’s family lived. However, my mother never went that way because the stream flooded the road and it was altogether not a very nice part of the village. So we now skirted the Green and bore to our left.

  As we were passing the little house on the edge of the Green where two elderly sisters kept a school and where I had often seen the scholars going in and out carrying their books and slates, I asked: “When I can read really well, shall I go to school there?”

  “No, I shall continue to teach you. And we’ll have such fun in our own little school. I asked Uncle Marty to buy a lot of books for us, and he said in his letter yesterday that he had despatched them so they should arrive any day now. This was the news I said last night I was going to tell you.” She raised her hand to her forehead: “Oh, I didn’t answer his letter this morning, what with all the excitement. Will you remind me later, Johnnie?”

  “What sort of books will he have chosen, do you think?”

  “Well,” she answered, “because he has been a little unwell, he had to ask another gentleman we both know, Mr Sancious, to choose them.”

  We passed the pond into which the stream drained, and at the end of the Green reached the bridge where the road forked. The left-hand road ran round the village in a large circle and was the way we always went, but the other went up Gallow-tree-hill towards the turnpike and we had never taken that road.

  “Please let’s go up the hill.”

  “You’ve been told over and over again that there is no gallows there now.”

  That was true, but I could not believe that there could be nothing at all to see: “I don’t care about that. But you know what I want to see.”

  “Oh very well, we’ll go a little way up it but not as far as the turnpike.”

  To begin with the road was a deep, narrow lane between a high wall on our left and overgrown hedges on the other side so that it was impossible to see anything as we walked. Once we had to flatten ourselves against the wall as a great cart came rumbling down the hill towards us bouncing over the stones embedded in the surface of the road. Further on, the wall on our left was broken down so low in places that we could see through it the rich, rolling green slopes of the valley decorated with occasional trees.

  “I believe I can see something shining,” I exclaimed. “Do you think it can be a lake?”

  “Those are the park-woods of a great estate,” my mother said softly.

  “I can see deer!” I cried.

  “Yes, they preserve game.” As we walked on she added: “And that reminds me, Johnnie, you must never ask Sukey about her father. It would cause her great pain. I will explain it to you when you’re older.”

  I was hardly listening for the turnpike must soon be in sight. At intervals I jumped up to try to see over the high hedgerows, and once as I did so I caught a glimpse of the top of a big waggon up ahead of us at a right-angle to the way we were coming. A little further on I could see, without having to jump, the high bales of straw it was carrying and a man perched on top, but I could not see the driver or the horses so that the man seemed to be sailing magically over the tops of the hedges like the boy in the Arabian Tales, and moving surprisingly rapidly for so large a vehicle — certainly faster than I could walk. Excitedly I turned back and shouted: “It must be on the turnpike!”

  “We must turn back now,” she said.

  “Just a little further,” I begged.

  “No. It’s turning bad and I believe it’s going to rain.”

  It was true that the blue sky was darkening a little in the east, but in the west the sun was still shining.

  She reached towards me but I ran off and up the hill. As the slope flattened towards the summit, the lane grew wider and then turned into a muddy delta-mouth with the ruts of cart-tracks radiating out from it to the left and right. Then suddenly I was upon the road itself: a wide, perfectly flat, stony strip extending in both directions, sometimes vanishing for a few yards in a hollow of the ridge’s summit but appearing again inexorably, until it disappeared from view at a distance of two or three miles in either direction. I scuffed at it with my foot, and only managed to dislodge a few small stones, for the surface was of a hard, tarred kind I had never seen before which was covered all over with gravel. Beside the turning there was a milestone bearing the legend: “L: CLIX”, and I knew now what city the “L” stood for.

  It was late afternoon and the sky was beginning to change to a darker blue as a cool wind began to blow. I looked down towards the village which seemed very far away and very small and tried to make out which roof-top was ours. I turned in the other direction towards the park and I now saw that there was an entrance a few yards away that gave directly onto the turnpike. It had high pillars on either side, each surmounted by a stone globe, and its great gate was standing open.

  At that moment my mother came up with me, panting hard, and seized my shoulder: “You are wicked. Bissett is right.”

  “Oh now that we’re here, do let’s wait and see if a stage-coach comes!” I cried.

  Before my mother could answer, a carriage and pair emerged from the entrance. The equipage was of a magnificence that I had never seen equalled even in the days when the Rose and Crab had still put up travellers. It was a brightly-varnished canary-yellow landau with a splendidly-attired coachman on the box and drawn by two superb matching greys. But what particularly caught my attention were the arms emblazoned in the pannels.

  The carriage turned towards us and I noticed my mother suddenly grow pale. As it came rumbling past us it seemed to me that it slowed down for I had time to take notice
of the two figures inside who, as it appeared, leaned forward to the window and stared out at us.

  The occupants were an old gentleman and a boy some years older than I. The gentleman was on our side of the carriage and I saw him clearly. He had scanty grey hair receding from a high-domed forehead that was disfigured, as was his face, by large blotchy patches that made me think of the brownish bodies of spiders. He had a long jaw that jutted out and over which his lower lip hung down. But most striking of all were his eyes which were red and deep-sunken with dark folds of wrinkled skin beneath them. As the carriage passed, his head seemed to turn as if riveted on my mother’s face, and she, equally, turned as if unable to resist returning that sinister gaze.

  “I knew we shouldn’t have come here,” she muttered when the carriage had passed us. “Oh Johnnie, what have you done? Come, we must go back immediately.”

  She set off the way we had come and now I had to run to catch her up.

  “Who was that old gentleman,” I asked her. “Did you know him?”

  “Don’t ask me any questions, please, Johnnie,” she suddenly exclaimed. “You’ve already been very bad indeed.”

  As we walked swiftly home almost in silence, I was thinking about something I dared not ask her: I had noticed that the shield emblazoned on the carriage-door was divided diagonally into two halves. One of them contained a crab, vividly portrayed with its numerous legs emerging from the shell and its ugly pincers at its head — so I was surely right about the Rose and Crab! But what had particularly struck me was the other half of the shield which contained exactly the arrangement of five four-petalled roses that I had seen only the day before on the silver letter-case.

  When we got home I was surprised to discover that in our absence the carpenter and blacksmith, summoned by Bissett on my mother’s instructions, had been hard at work. Both the front and back doors now had stronger bolts, and all the windows that could be reached from the ground had bars across them. Even the back-gate from the garden was now spiked and had a padlock. There was more to come for the next day the men would return and top the garden-wall and the gate with metal spikes. Moreover, my mother insisted that from now on the servants should ensure that the back-door was bolted at dusk and the garden-gate padlocked.