Death Comes to Cambers (12 page)

Bobby got permission to see the room he had occupied, but close examination showed nothing of interest. Nor had Mr. Jones left anything behind. His room was on the first floor, so that exit from it during the night without attracting attention would have been easy enough, especially as there was a convenient gutter-pipe adjacent. As for his address, he had given it simply as ‘Cromwell Road, London', which struck Bobby as about as helpful as ‘Everywhere, Anywhere', since, indeed, there are probably few parts of London into which the Cromwell Road does not extend its interminable length. However, Bobby got as full a description as possible of his personal appearance, and a promise that the room should not be disturbed until a finger-print expert had visited it. If good impressions could be obtained from any of the furniture, and if Mr. Jones happened to be a gentleman who had had previous commerce with the police of the country, his identity would be very quickly established.

One thing that came out in further talk was that Mr. Jones had seemed specially interested in Eddy Dene and his archaeological researches in Frost Field, on Mr. Hardy's farm. He had explained to the landlady that he himself had studied the subject, and was extraordinarily interested in old castles, cathedrals, and so on – that, in fact, he, so to speak, ‘collected' them – and it took Bobby some time to deduce that in Mr. Jones's mind there probably existed a slight confusion between archaeology and architecture. This interest displayed by Mr. Jones had not, however, much surprised the landlady, for, she explained, Eddy Dene was by way of being famous, and had even had his picture in the papers. And when once a gentleman came from Oxford to see him, Eddy had conducted the conversation as man to man, ‘just as it might be you and me,' said the landlady, suitably impressed by Oxford, its accent, its general affability.

‘Not that I hold with this proving we all come from monkeys,' the landlady went on, ‘as those can believe who like, and, if it's true, what's the sense of raking up the past?'

As an answer was evidently expected, Bobby said meekly that he didn't know, and asked if Mr. Dene wasn't engaged to one of the maids at Cambers House.

The landlady shrugged her ample shoulders and opined that no self-respecting girl would put up with a boy who hardly ever took any notice of her.

‘I wouldn't be taken for granted the way he takes her,' declared the landlady. ‘It's all been the old people's doing. They brought Amy up, and they always had it fixed she and Eddy were to marry, but there's nothing he thinks of but his bones and stones and things, though I don't hold with all vicar says, because if it's a judgement, why's it fallen on her, poor lady, instead of him? But mark my words, there'll be a bigger congregation at church next Sunday than there's been for long enough.' 

‘Mr. Andrews felt strongly about it, then?' Bobby asked. ‘I don't see why.'

‘If Eddy Dene proved we were all apes before we were made,' explained the landlady, ‘then the Bible's all wrong, isn't it? And if Bible's wrong, where's church? And church is vicar's living, isn't it? Why, my old man himself heard Eddy and vicar telling each other off proper, and vicar saying how God would speak, and Eddy saying he hoped, anyhow, God wouldn't speak with a sniffle like vicar's, him having a cold, poor man – which,' said the landlady, lowering her voice reverently, ‘God wouldn't – and vicar tearing straight off to talk to Lady Cambers and how she was imperilling her mortal soul and all of ours as well, because of us being apes perhaps and so having none. But what I say is,' concluded the landlady, a little breathless, ‘don't go raking up anyone's past, but see dinner's cooked and ready on time and the floors swept proper.'

From the inn, Bobby went on to the shop kept by Eddy Dene's parents – theoretically a grocery establishment, but stocking many other things as well, from hardware to stationery, from cigarettes to aspirin. At the moment it was full of customers, most of whom, however, seemed less occupied in making purchases than in general converse. Even that Draconian law which forbids one commercial traveller to enter a shop while another of the fraternity is present there, seemed to have been abrogated for the time, since a gentleman who sought orders for paper bags was talking quite amiably to another who had for mission to establish a market in an entirely new brand of ink for fountain-pens, neatly named the ‘Perennial', in the hope that a simple-minded public would accept the implication that it ‘flowed for ever'. His instructions were to give away one sample bottle and one only – ‘one only' much emphasized and strictly observed – in each neighbourhood, so that the great opening day of the sales campaign might arrive to the accompaniment of the slogan, ‘Every Retailer has Tried It Himself.' But though conversation in the shop was both general and animated, on one detail none touched. What had in fact brought all these people hither was the story spread already through the village that the police wished to question Eddy Dene, but were unable to find him. Even the fountain-pen-ink merchant had delayed his departure from a locality in which he had completed all his business the previous weekend in order to discover for himself whether there was or was not any truth in the story. For, oddly enough, the state of a traveller's order-book depends very largely on whether he has the latest funny story to relate, the latest bit of local gossip to recount. Unfortunately the attitude of Eddy's parents had not been of a nature to encourage much inquiry concerning his present whereabouts.

Mr. Dene, a small, withered, anxious-looking man, nervous and even excitable in manner, but plainly used to keeping himself well in hand, as befits a good tradesman whose motto has to be that the customer is always right, was behind the counter, making occasional, distracted, and not very successful, efforts to lead the conversation from the recent tragedy to current needs. Mrs. Dene, large, plump, and comfortable-looking, hovered in the background, occasionally vanishing into the parlour behind the shop, and then again emerging to listen to, or join in, one of the many discussions going on.

Bobby's entrance caused a sudden hush, for most of those present knew who he was. And since everyone was looking hard at him, and was on the evident tiptoe of expectation, he thought it best to ask at once for Eddy, and, on being told with a certain hesitation that he was out, to go on to request a few moments' talk with Mr. and Mrs. Dene.

Mr. Dene looked more worried than ever, paused to sell a frying-pan to a customer who didn't want it but could think of no other excuse for presence in the shop, remarked that he had enough to do to mind his own business, bad as business was with things the way they were and the motor-buses taking people to Hirlpool, where they seemed to like paying more than others nearer home charged for exactly the same thing. As for Eddy, Eddy looked after his own affairs, and little enough he cared about the business; and Mrs. Dene interposed with the remark that Eddy was so upset by what had happened it was no wonder he felt he couldn't face company, but if the gentleman cared to step into the parlour and wait, most likely he wouldn't be long, and then the gentleman could ask him any questions he wanted to, not that there was anything Eddy knew more than others.

It was an unpopular suggestion with the customers in the shop, who did not at all like this manner of ravishing from their ken one into whose every word could be read according to taste a meaning and a significance for general retailing and discussion. But Bobby accepted it at once, and in the little parlour Mrs. Dene set herself instantly to explain how terrible a shock it had been to them all, and in especial to her boy.

That she was vaguely uneasy and more or less on the defensive was perfectly plain, though with her this unease took the form of nervous chattering just as with her husband it took the form of an equally nervous restraint. She was bitter about the rush of customers to the shop, and especially bitter about the two commercial travellers. With some detail she explained that one had finished his business in that district and should have left before this for another, and that the second traveller, the paper-bag gentleman, had left a district he had not even begun to work in order to visit this one.

‘Gossip, that's all they want,' she said indignantly. ‘Just something to talk your head off, and then push an order-form under your nose before you even know what it's for.'

Bobby agreed that commercial travellers were undoubtedly the pest of all the ages, and gently brought the conversation back to Eddy. Mrs. Dene had evidently no idea where he was or what had become of him, but thought it no wonder he wished to be by himself, away from everyone.

‘It's terrible for him,' she explained. ‘Everything he owed to her ladyship, and wrapped up in his work so nothing else counted; and now, very like, it'll all have to stop with no more help coming from her, and even his chance of a situation with the American gentleman will be gone now, most likely.'

‘What American gentleman is that?' Bobby asked.

Mrs. Dene was a little vague. All she was sure about was a magnificent opening had been as good as promised, through the good offices of Lady Cambers, with an American gentleman of enormous wealth. Now, most likely, no more would be heard of it. Misfortunes never came singly.

She went on to relate that as usual Eddy had been up early. A good hard-working boy he was, even if it was his own mother said it. But everyone would say the same. It was his habit to work in the shop in the mornings. After dinner, at noon, he would go on to his diggings at Frost Field – or, rather, to examine and check the results of the morning's work done there by the two workmen whose wages Lady Cambers paid. After tea, he would help in the shop again as a rule, unless business was slack, and then as soon as the shutters were up occupy himself again with his studies.

A busy, hard, laborious life, it seemed by Mrs. Dene's account, divided between the daily business of the shop and the archaeological researches in Frost Field. Concerning these, Mrs. Dene was torn between pride and dislike – dislike because they took Eddy away from his work in the shop, pride that such learned pursuits should be followed by a son of hers. And it was fairly plain, too, that both she and her husband stood in considerable awe of the strange fledgling they had so unexpectedly hatched out. Bobby gathered, indeed, that Eddy had not been suffered to go his own way without considerable opposition, and, indeed, scenes of some violence.

‘Frets and worries and then flares up, that's him,' Mrs. Dene said, of her husband, ‘and Eddy takes after him; but if he goes his own way, no one can deny he's a good son and does his duty by the business – shame as it is that with his learning he should have to think of such things.'

‘He is engaged to Miss Emmers, isn't he?' Bobby asked.

‘Settled ever since they were babies together,' Mrs. Dene assured him. ‘He never shows it much, but she's all the world to him; only, a man always has to remember his work, too – it's not like it is with a woman; a woman's man is her work.'

‘Is the marriage likely to be soon?' Bobby asked.

‘Well, you see, it's like this,' explained Mrs. Dene, with a certain hesitation, ‘and times being so bad and all. But if poor Lady Cambers had got Eddy a post with the American gentleman, then, as her ladyship said herself, there wouldn't have been any cause to wait not another moment. But how things will turn out now her ladyship's gone, there's no telling.'

‘It will be a great disappointment,' Bobby observed. ‘They must have found it very trying having to wait so long.'

Mrs. Dene agreed, but with a certain lack of enthusiasm still apparent in her voice, and went on to talk vaguely about young people in these days being in no hurry to settle down. It was different when she was young, she said. Bobby found himself forming the impression that it was partly in order to avoid being hurried into matrimony that Amy had left the shop for domestic service with Lady Cambers.

Lady Cambers too, then, had been urging on the marriage between her maid and her protégé, and the impression of her character Bobby had formed was strengthened. A busy, benevolent, managing woman, she had been, apparently, one always anxious to do what seemed to her best for others. Evidently she had been doing a great deal to help Eddy, had been anxious to do still more, and specially anxious to see the young couple settled down together for life.

‘Most like Eddy will have to give up his studying and digging and suchlike,' Mrs. Dene said, with a mingling of satisfaction at the prospect and of dread of its possible effect on him, ‘now it don't seem there'll be any more money to help pay for it with her ladyship gone, poor soul. And, likely enough, there'll be Amy coming home with no more call for her to stay at Cambers House – and that'll mean the four of us for the business to keep.'

Of the capacity of the business to perform that feat she was evidently by no means convinced, and Bobby asked: ‘Perhaps your son will be able to get help from someone else?'

Mrs. Dene didn't think that likely, and evidently didn't much welcome the idea. She explained that two or three very learned gentlemen had come to see what Eddy was doing. But Eddy had not been very communicative, and they had not been very enthusiastic. He had told her afterwards that they had wanted him to explain his theories, and he had refused to do so, preferring to keep them to himself till he was able to produce proof he was right. Only Lady Cambers herself knew his real purpose. Bobby gathered that the ‘learned gentlemen' had attempted to patronize Eddy, and that Eddy had not been grateful. With mingled pride and terror, for it was easy to see Mrs. Dene was as scared of her formidable son as she was proud of him, she related the encounter, and told of a further encounter with the vicar, who apparently had managed to get Lady Cambers to tell him something of the theories Eddy was trying to establish, and had viewed them with much disfavour.