Erica wished that the tent had not been in a wood. From her earliest
childhood she had been fearless by nature (the kind of child of whom older
people say out hunting: not a nerve in her body), but there was no denying
that she didn’t like woods. She liked to see a long way away. And though the
stream ran bright and clear and merry in the sunlight, the pool in the hollow
was still and deep and forbidding. One of those sudden, secret cups of black
water more common in Sussex than in Kent.
As she came across the clearing carrying the little dancer in her hand, a
dog rushed out at her, shattering the quiet with hysterical protest. And at
the noise a woman came to the tent door and stood there watching Erica as she
came. She was a very tall woman, broad-shouldered and straight, and Erica had
the mad feeling that this long approach to her over an open floor should end
in a curtsey.
“Good afternoon,” she called, cheerfully, above the clamor of the dog. But
the woman waited without moving. “I have a piece of china—can’t you
make that dog be quiet?” She was face-to-face with her now, only the noise of
the dog between them.
The woman lifted a foot to the animal’s ribs, and the high yelling died
into silence. The murmur of the stream came back.
Erica showed the broken porcelain figure.
“Harry!” called the woman, her black inquisitive eyes not leaving Erica.
And Harry came to the tent door: a small weaselish man with bloodshot eyes,
and evidently in the worst of tempers. “A job for you.”
“I’m not working,” said Harry, and spat.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I heard you were very good at mending things.”
The woman took the figure and broken piece from Erica’s hands. “He’s
working, all right,” she said.
Harry spat again, and took the pieces. “Have you the money to pay?” he
asked, angrily.
“How much will it be?”
“Two shillings.”
“Two and six,” said the woman.
“Oh, yes, I have that much.”
He went back into the tent, and the woman stood in the way so that Erica
could neither follow nor see. Unconsciously she had, in imagining this
moment, always placed herself inside the tent—with the coat folded up
in the corner. Now she was not even to be allowed to see inside.
“He won’t be long,” Queenie said. “By the time you’ve cut a whistle from
the ash tree, it’ll be ready.”
Erica’s small sober face broke into one of its rare smiles. “You thought I
couldn’t do that, didn’t you?” For the woman’s phrase had been a flick in the
face of a supposed town dweller.
She cut the wood with her pocketknife, shaped it, nicked it, and damped it
in the stream, hoping that a preoccupation might disarm Queenie and her
partner. She even hoped that the last processes of whistle manufacture might
be made in friendly company with the mending of china. But the moment she
moved back to the tent, Queenie came from her desultory stick gathering in
the wood to stand guard. And Erica found her whistle finished and the mended
figure in her hands, without being one whit wiser or richer than she was when
she left the car in the road. She could have cried.
She produced her small purse (Erica hated a bag) and paid her half crown,
and the sight of the folded notes in the little back partition all waiting to
do their work of rescue, drove her to desperation. Without any warning and
without knowing she was going to say it, she asked the man:
“What did you do with the coat you took at Dymchurch?”
There was a moment of complete stillness, and Erica rushed on:
“I don’t want to do anything about it. Prosecuting, or anything like that,
I mean. But I do want that coat awfully bad. I’ll buy it back from you if you
still have it. Or if you’ve pawned it—”
“You’re a nice one!” the man burst out. “Coming here to have a job of work
done and then accusing a man of battle and blue murder. You be out of here
before I lose my temper good and proper and crack you one on the side of the
jaw. Impudent little—with your loose tongue. I’ve a good mind to twist
it out of, your bloody head, and what’s s more I—”
The woman pushed him aside and stood over Erica, tall and
intimidating.
“What makes you think my man took a coat?”
“The coat he had when Jake, the lorry driver, gave him a lift a week last
Tuesday was taken from a car at Dymchurch. We know that.” She hoped the “we”
sounded well. And she hoped she didn’t sound as doubtful as she felt. They
were both very innocent and indignant-looking. “But it isn’t a matter of
making a case. We only want the coat back. I’ll give you a pound for it,” she
added, as they were about to break in on her again.
She saw their eyes change. And in spite of her predicament a great relief
flooded her. The man was
the
man. They knew what coat she was talking
about.
“And if you’ve pawned it, I’ll give you ten shillings to tell me
where.”
“What do you get out of this?” the woman said. “What do
you
want
with a man’s coat?”
“I didn’t say anything about it being a man’s.” Triumph ran through her
like an electric shock.
“Oh, never mind!” Queenie dismissed with rough impatience any further
pretense. “What is it to you?”
If she mentioned murder they would both panic, and deny with their last
breath any knowledge of the coat. She knew well, thanks to her father’s
monologues, the petty offender’s horror of major crime. They would go to
almost any lengths to avoid being mixed up, even remotely, in a capital
charge.
“It’s to get Hart out of trouble,” she said. “He shouldn’t have left the
car unattended. The owner is coming back tomorrow, and if the coat isn’t
found by then Hart will lose his job.”
“Who’s Art?” asked the woman. “Your brother?”
“No. Our chauffeur.”
“Chauffeur!” Harry gave a high skirl of laughter that had little amusement
in it. “That’s a good one. I suppose you have two Rolls-Royces and five
Bentleys.” His little red eyes ran over her worn and outgrown clothes.
“No. Just a Lanchester and my old Morris.” As their disbelief penetrated:
“My name is Erica Burgoyne. My father is Chief Constable.”
“Ye’? My name is John D. Rockefeller, and my father was the Duke of
Wellington.”
Erica whipped up her short tweed skirt, gripped the elastic waistband of
the gym knickers she wore summer and winter, and pushed the inner side of it
towards him on an extended thumb.
“Can you read?” she said.
“Erica M. Burgoyne” read the astonished man, in red on a Cash’s label.
“It’s a great mistake to be too skeptical,” she said, letting the elastic
snap back into place.
“So you’re doing it for a chauffeur, eh?” Harry leered at her, trying to
get back his lost ground. “You’re very concerned about a chauffeur, aren’t
you?”
“I’m desperately in love with him,” Erica said, in the tone in which one
says: “And a box of matches, please.” At school theatricals Erica had always
had charge of the curtains.
But it passed. Their minds were too full of speculation to be concerned
with emotion.
“How much?” said the woman.
“For the coat?”
“No. For telling you where to find it.”
“I told you, I’ll give you ten shillings.”
“Not enough.”
“But how do I know you’ll tell me the truth?”
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?”
“All right, I’ll give you a pound. I shall still have to buy it from the
pawnshop, you know.”
“It isn’t in a pawnshop,” the man said. “I sold it to a
stone-breaker.”
“W-h-a-t!” cried Erica in a despairing wail. “Do I have to begin looking
for someone else?”
“Oh, no need to look, no need at all. You hand over the cash, and I’ll
tell you where to find the bloke.”
Erica took out a pound note and showed it to him. “Well?”
“He’s working at the Five Wents crossroad, Paddock Wood way. And if he
ain’t there, he lives in a cottage in Capel. Near the church.”
Erica held out the note. But the woman had seen the contents of the
purse.
“Wait, Harry! She’ll pay more.” She moved between Erica and the path
through the wood.
“I won’t give you a penny more,” Erica said incisively. Indignation
overcame her awareness of the black pool, the silence, and her dislike of
woods. “That’s cheating.”
The woman grabbed at her purse; but Erica had played lacrosse for her
school only last winter. Queenie’s eager hand, to her great astonishment, met
not the purse but Erica’s other arm, and came up and hit her own face with
surprising violence. And Erica was around her stately bulk and running across
the clearing, as she had swerved and run, half-bored, half-pleased, through
many winter afternoons.
She heard them come after her, and wondered what they would do to her if
they caught up with her. She wasn’t afraid of the woman, but the man was
small and light, and for all his drinking might be speedy. And he knew the
path. In the shade of the trees, after the bright sunlight, she could hardly
see a path at all. She wished she had said that someone was waiting for her
in the car. It would have been—
Her foot caught in a root, and she rolled over and over.
She heard him coming thudding down the soft path, and as she sat up his
face appeared, as if it were swimming towards her, above the undergrowth. In
a few seconds he would be on her. She had fallen heavily because she was
still clutching something in either hand. She looked to see what she was
holding. In one hand was the china figure; in the other her purse
and—the whistle.
The whistle! She put it to her mouth and blew a sort of tattoo. Long and
short, like a code. A signal.
At the sound the man stopped, only a few yards from her, doubtfully.
“Hart!” she called with all the force of her very good lungs. “Hart!” And
whistled again.
“All right,” said the man, “all right! You can have your—Hart.
Someday I’ll tell your pa what’s going on around his house. And I’ll bet you
pay me more than a few quid then, me lady!”
“Good-bye,” said Erica. “Thank your wife from me for the whistle.”
“AND of course, what you want, Inspector, is a rest. A
little relaxation.” The Chief Constable heaved himself into his raincoat.
“Overworking yourself disgracefully. That never got a man anywhere. Except
into his grave. Here it is Friday, and I dare swear you haven’t had a night’s
sleep or a proper meal this week. Ridiculous! Mustn’t take the thing to heart
like that. Criminals have escaped before and will escape again.”
“Not from me.”
“Overdue, then. That’s all I can say. Very overdue. Everyone makes
mistakes. Who was to think a door in a bedroom was a fire escape,
anyhow?”
“I should have looked in the cupboards.”
“Oh, my dear good sir—”
“The first one opened towards me, so that I could see inside. And by the
time he came to the second he had lulled me into—”
“I told you you were losing your sense of proportion! If you don’t get
away for a little, you’ll be seeing cupboards everywhere. You’ll be what your
Sergeant Williams calls ‘falling down on the job.’ You are coming back to
dinner with me. You needn’t ‘but’ me! It’s only twenty miles.”
“But meanwhile something may—”
“We have a telephone. Erica said I was to bring you. Said something about
ordering ices specially. You fond of ices? Anyhow, she said she had something
to show you.”
“Puppies?” Grant smiled.
“Don’t know. Probably. Never a moment in the year, it seems to me, when
there isn’t a litter of sort at Steynes. Here is your excellent substitute.
Good evening, Sergeant.”
“Good evening, sir,” said Williams, rosily pink from his high tea.
“I’m taking Inspector Grant home to dinner with me.”
“Very glad, sir. It’ll do the Inspector good to eat a proper meal.”
“That’s my telephone number, in case you want him.”
Grant’s smile broadened as he watched the spirit that won the empire in
full blast. He was very tired. The week had been a long purgatory. The
thought of sitting down to a meal in a quiet room among leisured people was
like regaining some happier sphere of existence that he had known a long time
ago and half-forgotten about.
Automatically he put together the papers on the desk.
“To quote one of Sergeant Williams’s favorite sayings: ‘As a detective I’m
a grand farmer.’ Thank you, I’d like to come to dinner. Kind of Miss Erica to
think of me.” He reached for his hat.
“Thinks a lot of you, Erica. Not impressionable as a rule. But you are the
big chief, it seems.”
“I have a picturesque rival, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, yes. Olympia. I remember. I don’t know much about bringing up
children, you know, Grant,” he said as they went out to the car. “Erica’s my
only one. Her mother died when she was born, and I made her a sort of
companion instead of letting her grow up in the nursery. Her old nurse and I
were always having words about it. Great stickler for the
comme il
faut
and all that, Nannie. Then she went to school. Must find your own
level, that’s all education is: learning to deal with people. She didn’t like
it, but she stuck it. A good plucked ‘un, she is.”
“I think she is a charming child,” Grant said heartily, answering the
“justifying” tone and the Colonel’s worried look.
“That’s just it, Grant, that’s just it! She isn’t a child any longer. She
should be coming out. Going to dances. Staying with her aunts in town and
meeting people. But she doesn’t want to. Just stays at home and runs wild.
Doesn’t care for clothes or pretties or any of the things she should care
about at her age. She’s seventeen, you know. It worries me. She’s taken to
gadding about all over the place in that little car of hers. I don’t know
where she has been half the time. Not that she doesn’t tell me if I ask.
Always a truthful child. But it worries me.”
“I don’t think it need, sir. She’ll make her own happiness. You’ll see.
It’s rare to meet anyone of that age who has so sure a knowledge of what she
wants.”