Authors: Emma Smith
“Maybe not,” she replied with spirit, “but then, it was quite a turn you gave us, knocking. We don’t expect to have callers, not in such an out-of-the-way place as this is, especially after dark—and with the snow, too. ‘Whoever can that be?’ I said to Amy—”
“Did you?” he cut in, rather dryly. “The usual method of finding out is to open the door and see. However,” he went on, sniffing, “since I believe you’re about to offer us hot roast lamb as compensation for our inconvenience, I’ll say no more. I accept the compensation! How very good it smells!” And he sniffed again.
“If you mean you’re hoping for a slice of mutton, then I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” said Mrs Bowen, promptly. “Amy and me have had our supper and we finished it up, every bit, and Mick’s had the scraps. So you see I can’t offer you what’s not there, can I?”
“Surely it can’t
all
be gone?”
“Oh, yes, it can! There’s not a morsel of mutton left in this house, not unless you count the smell of it—you’re welcome to that,” she said, with a hint of malice. But then she relented: “I’d be willing to cook you an egg each, and a piece of bacon, if it’s food you’re in need of—would that do?”
“It doesn’t sound as though we’ve got much choice,” said he. “Very well, then—let it be eggs and bacon. Only you’ll certainly have to give us more than one egg each—three at least. We’re hungry!”
“Oh! Hungry is it? Then you’ve come to the wrong door. You should have kept on through Melin-y-Groes another few miles till you got to Llwynffynnon—that’s the place where people can order any meals they happen to fancy any time they happen to fancy them,” said Mrs Bowen, once again thoroughly vexed by him. Who did he think he was, knocking on her door and demanding food as though she ran a café in town?
Amy hovered unhappily in the background. She no longer felt what she had first felt for the tall fair smiling policeman; later events had modified that initial infatuation. She still viewed him with admiration, but her allegiance had shifted, so that the admiration was coloured now by extreme anxiety as to what he had it in his power to do, and also by the guilt of knowing that in going against his purpose they were going, as her grandmother had said, against the law. There was one thing, though, of which she felt absolutely sure: it was important to please him. To get annoyed and show that annoyance as clearly as her grandmother was doing, was bound to be a mistake. Amy bit her lip and pressed her fist against her jersey. Instead of the beating of her heart she was aware of the stiff shape of the letter concealed there.
“Give us whatever you’ve got,” said the man that she had once hoped would be her friend, and there was a change in his voice. The light bantering note had gone, and instead it sounded curt and cold. Mrs Bowen had gone too far, as Amy had feared might happen, and he was not amused by her any more; he was displeased. “That dog of yours seems to be a pretty vicious animal,” he said.
Mick, tucked underneath Amy’s arm, had all this time been snarling quietly but continuously.
“Vicious he is not,” declared Mrs Bowen, quite unabashed by an altered tone. “There’s no dog in the world with a sweeter temper than our Mick. He’ll bark, of course, as any dog will, but it’s not often I hear him snarl. No doubt he has his own reasons for it. Amy, you’d better put Mick in the side-kitchen, and bring in a cloth to wipe up all this mess. No, no—don’t take the lamp, child. Where are your manners? We can’t leave visitors standing in the dark. Here’s one of the candles for you.”
Amy was glad to escape into the side-kitchen. Now was her opportunity for hiding the letter, only she must be quick and where was she to put it? On the floor perhaps, under the coconut matting. Or up on the cratch with the butter and cheese? But it might get greasy there. She swivelled on her heels, the candle guttering. Where?—oh,
where
? Finally she slipped it beneath the strip of newspaper lining a shelf and stood a jar of pickles on top. That would surely be safe enough; and after all, she reflected, it was only for a short time.
“I’m sorry, Mick,” she said, kneeling to hug him and explain why he was being banished. “You mustn’t snarl at a policeman, though, not even if he did give you a bit of a kick by mistake. It’s cold out here, I know, but ’tisn’t for long, boy—they’ll soon be gone.”
She took a cloth and a basin and going back into the other room set about mopping the puddles off the floor. Mrs Bowen was over at the dresser, talking, her back turned as she reached down plates from the shelves, and got out knives and forks from the drawer.
“If I don’t seem to be all that hospitable,” she was saying, “you’ll have to excuse me. The fact of it is, with me and Amy being here on our own, and the snow coming on so sudden, there’s not much more in the way of provisions than just enough for the two of us. You’re the police, Amy tells me,” she added abruptly.
At least her grandmother sounded more friendly, thought Amy, crouched low on the floor, mopping away. She peeped up at the tall man who was warming his hands in front of the fire. He too gave the impression of having recovered his good humour.
“Yes,” he said.
“From London, are you?” asked Mrs Bowen, deftly laying the places.
“Yes,” he said again.
He gave no indication of resenting either of her questions. Amy was thankful. Perhaps everything was going to turn out peaceably after all.
“That’s a long way to have come,” said Mrs Bowen. She took the candle and disappeared into the side-kitchen.
Left alone with the two men, Amy studied them covertly. How different they were; and not in appearance only. Ever since their arrival the little dark one had been restlessly prowling round the room, picking up objects, tapping the barometer, lifting the lid of their old oak chest, actually looking inside the grandfather clock as though hoping to find more there than just weights and a pendulum. But the other, tall and fair, had propped his shoulders comfortably against the mantelpiece and so remained, unmoving, his legs crossed, apparently occupied by his own thoughts.
It was him that Amy was watching now. From the first moment he had fascinated her; puzzled her too. She felt there was something about him, something important, that he kept out of sight, and his elegant lounging attitude, his soft laughing voice, even his clothes, even his blonde hair shining smooth as silk in the lamplight, were all like a disguise for this secret quality that she could sense hidden, like rock hidden under a grassy track, but could not identify. He looked up suddenly and Amy was caught staring, speared on the shaft of his brilliantly pale blue eyes.
“Let me see now—you’re Amy, aren’t you?” he said.
She nodded, standing back by the table, shyly.
“And your grandmother—what’s her name?”
Before Amy could answer Mrs Bowen reappeared carrying a bowl of eggs and some rashers of bacon. She blew out the candle with a breath violent enough to have blown out a bonfire. Amy realised that the truce had been brief and was over.
“Since you ask, I’m Mrs Bowen. And now that it seems we’re telling names I suppose I might as well know yours.”
“You might as well, Mrs Bowen. Let us by all means introduce ourselves, and then we shall feel more confidence in each other, shan’t we? I’m Chief Inspector Catcher of Scotland Yard in London. How do you do? You can call me simply Inspector, Mrs Bowen, if you like—it’s shorter, isn’t it?—easier to remember. And this is my assistant, Mr Nabb.”
He was smiling at her but Mrs Bowen faced him without a flicker of response. Then she turned on the other man.
“And what do you think you’re doing?”
He had opened the door at the foot of the stairs and as he did so Queenie, who had crept softly up behind him, streaked past and out of sight.
“Just looking.”
“Well, this is my house you’re in and you’ll ask my permission before you start opening doors
and just looking.
Lifting lids and handling private property—I saw you!”
Amy had never known her grandmother to be so indignant before. It made her horribly nervous. But the Inspector was still smiling. He bent towards Mrs Bowen and spoke gently.
“The police”, he said, “have a right to look wherever they want to look. It’s their duty. And your duty, Mrs Bowen, is not to hinder them in any way.”
Mrs Bowen went very red.
“I don’t need to be told my duty, Inspector. That’s my affair, and no concern of anyone else, I’ll thank you to remember. But if you’ve a right to go poking about in my house then I’ve got a right to know what for.”
“Why yes, of course you have,” he answered her soothingly. “We’re on the trail of a very dangerous criminal, Mrs Bowen. He’s seven foot tall and six foot wide—a regular Goliath, I’m told. You can count yourselves lucky to be enjoying the benefit of police protection in return for food and shelter—it’s really not safe for you, and a child, to be up here in this cottage on your own with someone like that about.”
“What’s he done?” said Mrs Bowen.
Amy took a step forward and gripped the back of a chair. Now at last they were going to know. The two men exchanged glances.
“He murdered a fellow,” said Mr Nabb, laconically.
There was a pause. Amy felt her mouth go dry. So he was a murderer after all.
“Well, you won’t find any murderer in my house,” declared Mrs Bowen, banging at the fire with the poker and slamming the pan on top.
“But we have to look, Mrs Bowen,” said he. “The police have to look, and they have to keep on looking, in every house and in every barn and building until he’s been found. We know he’s in this district. We’ve traced him as far as Pengarth. He came up from Cardiff on the back of a lorry—apparently the lorry-driver didn’t realise he was carrying a passenger as well as a load of crates underneath his tarpaulin—and he was seen leaving Pengarth on foot, making for the hills. That was three days ago, and nobody’s seen him since. Now, we’ve completely circled this stretch of uplands—forest, you call it, don’t you?—though I can’t think why when there’s not a tree for miles; we’ve been all round the boundaries of it. We’ve asked in your village down there, and we’ve got our own people posted ready in all the other outlying villages—there’s not been a sign of him. Therefore, if he’s gone in and he hasn’t come out, he’s still here, somewhere. It’s just a question of finding him—digging him out, like a fox—and this is where you can help us, Mrs Bowen, by pointing out any places where you think he might have taken cover—”
Amy had already recognised the map Mr Nabb was unfolding. There was one exactly like it on the wall of her classroom at school. It was an ordnance survey map and she knew that every single building, large or small, occupied or not, was marked upon it. Afterwards she had no recollection of deciding what to do; she only remembered doing it.
“I’ll show you the Gwyntfa,” she said, snatching the map from Mr Nabb’s hand and spreading it open on the table. The bottle of ink still stood as Bartolomeo had left it, the top unscrewed, her pen sticking out. Amy picked up the pen and, bending low, poised it accurately. Then she uttered a little cry of dismay.
“Oh, there now—look what I’ve done!”
“Where’s the blotting-paper?” said Mr Nabb. He spoke through clenched teeth, evidently infuriated by Amy’s act of clumsiness. “Get some blotting-paper—blot it up!”
“I can’t,” said Amy, trembling but thankful. “There isn’t any.”
“Then why couldn’t you have left that ink alone, instead of messing about with it? All you were asked to do was point, that was all—just point with your finger.”
“I’m sorry,” said Amy humbly. “I was going to put a little cross by our place—it’s there, see?”
She was afraid to raise her head in case she found Inspector Catcher watching her from the fireplace; in case those pale blue piercing eyes looked directly into her mind and discovered that she had just on purpose obliterated Tyler’s Place with a splodge of black ink.
“Oh, Amy,” said Mrs Bowen, coming and resting a hand on her shoulder, “what a pity for you to have done that to Mr Nabb’s nice map. Ah, well! Never mind! We can maybe scrape it off when it’s dry. Now then, let me see—it was buildings you were asking about, wasn’t it?—or any likely place a person might hide in. There’s a bit of a quarry somewhere further back, over the other side of the stream—that’s it, I think. It’ll be brimful of snow just now, I’d say, but it might be worth your while to take a look at it. And there was a house once—an inn, it was—higher up the valley. Is it marked still, Amy? I can’t tell for sure—my eyes aren’t as sharp as they used to be. I don’t suppose it’s more than just a heap of stones by now. And then down here, alongside the road—that’s where Mr Price’s place is. He’s got a big farm.”
Mr Nabb listened silently as she pointed out other farms and buildings to him; and silently, when the ink-blot had dried, he folded the map together. Amy’s block of writing-paper, which had been underneath the map, was revealed lying on the table, her name printed in bold capital letters on its cover. He had glanced at this block of paper before when he was nosing round the room, but left it alone. Now, with the persistence of a terrier searching for the scent of a rat, he picked it up, and turned back the cover, and there was the page that Bartolomeo had taken such care, out of politeness, not to tear off; the page on which Amy had begun for the second time to write to her father. Mr Nabb studied it with interest.
“That’s my letter,” said Amy, flushing.
She meant that he had no business to read what was private, but Mr Nabb, it seemed, was not impressed by privacy, for he read it just the same. First he read it to himself, and then he read it aloud:
“ ‘A funny thing happened.’ Oh? And what
was
the funny thing that happened?” he asked her.
“Why, you of course,” she blurted out. “It’s the first time I ever saw people on skis. Isn’t that what you call them—skis?”
Mrs Bowen was over by the fire again. She had started to fry the bacon.
“I’m going to have to trouble you to sit down,” she said to Inspector Catcher. During the whole of the previous exchange he had continued to support himself negligently against the mantelpiece. “You’re in my way there—I can’t get on with the cooking.” He obliged her by moving a step to one side, but no more. “Amy,” she called, “you make haste now and cut the bread and butter. It’s getting late and they’ll want to be off directly they’ve eaten their supper.”