Charles Palliser (6 page)

22 THE

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Still clinging to me, my mother began to weep, and to my amazement Bissett seized her by the shoulders and shook her fiercely: “Be silent,” she demanded. “We’re in no danger. Not less’n you cry out and draw their notice to us.”

“You don’t understand,” moaned my mother. “They’ve come to kill us, me and Johnnie.”

“They’re only thieves, ma’am. They seen the ladder and thought to break in easy.”

“No, no! You’re wrong,” my mother cried. “You don’t understand. Go to the window and call for help.”

“No, indeed,” said Bissett. “That would be dangerous.”

“You must believe me,” exclaimed my mother. “They’ll have firearms and they’ll be on the way up here now.”

Bissett crossed to the door, closed it, and then leant with her back against it.

“Well, they won’t be able to get in if they try. But most like they’re more frighted nor us and only want to get out.”

“Then let me go and look,” I said, trying to pull myself free from my mother’s grip.

“No, Johnnie,” exclaimed my mother anxiously, pressing me back into the bed.

“Bide there,” said Bissett. “We’ll give ’em time to be gone. ’Tis safest that way.”

We waited for what seemed an age, staring at each other in silence as we strained our ears for the slightest sound. With her arms still about me, I could feel that my mother was shivering, though it was a warm night. At last my keener hearing detected something: “Do you hear that?” I asked.

Bissett cautiously made her way to the window and looked out: “There they go,” she exclaimed. “I’ve just seen one of ’em go up the road.”

“Oh, thank heavens,” sighed my mother.

Then we all started and stared at each other in dismay as footsteps approached down the passage. The door opened slowly and Mrs Belflower appeared, magnificent in a night-gown and night-cap and carrying a candle. She was pale with terror.

She collapsed onto the bed and it was some minutes before she was able to tell us her story. Sleeping at the back of the house (and very heavily) she had not been woken by my cries, but she had heard sounds from downstairs and so had gone down.

“When I got to the foot of the stairs,” she went on, “I could see someone at the door trying to pull back them bolts as sticks so bad. I hadn’t brung no candle but there was light enough for me to see: ’twas a man! A stranger.”

“Oh you must have been terrified,” exclaimed my mother.

“No, ma’am, for I didn’t think. I jist said: ‘Who are you and what are you a-doin’?’ And he said … ” She glanced at me and said: “Well, nivver mind what he said. Then he just kind of girned and went on, cool as you like, pulling at them bolts. In a minute he had

’em free, and then he jist opened the door and made off.”

“What did he look like?” asked my mother.

However, she was unable to describe the man at all and even when my mother prompted her with a description of the tramper she could neither confirm nor deny that it might have been he. She was the only one of us, of course, who had not seen him that afternoon. Remembering the threat the man had made, I said nothing.

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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 24 THE

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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.”

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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 my 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

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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?”