Читать книгу Deep Moat Grange - Crockett Samuel Rutherford - Страница 10

It is wonderful how soon a thing is forgotten, or at least put on a shelf in people's memories. Poor Harry Foster, for example! There was a man now – a man murdered in the discharge of his duty, if ever a man was. And after a month or two another man was travelling the same road with a new mail cart and new sacks of letters, as quiet as water going down a mill-lade. The only difference was that he started a while later in the morning than poor Harry, after it was daylight, in fact, so that the Bewick people had to wait, often till midday, before they got their letters.

And when they made complaint to the Postmaster-General, or some other big-wig, he up and said to them, "You Bewickers, it is open to you to choose one of yourselves to bring up the mails from Breckonside, running the risk of Harry Foster's fate and providing a sufficient guarantee for any loss the post office run by Her Royal High Majesty may sustain."

Something like that he said. But no Bewicker offered. Of course not – why, they had skin creeps at the very thought.

"So," says the post official big-wig, "you Bewick cowards, be good enough to shut up and take your letters when they are sent out to you."

Still there were people who kept thinking about poor Harry for all that. And I was one of them. Elsie did not seem to care so much, or at least so long. Did you never observe that you can't keep a girl long interested in the same thing, unless you keep on telling her all the time how much prettier she is getting to look? But I did not know even that much, not then. I was just mortal green – green as father's spare pasture field after three days' steady rain and one of May sunshine. And, indeed, to tell the truth outright, I thought altogether too much at that time about people, and too little about my Latin and Greek prose, as Mr. Mustard, who was a good classic himself, often told me. He said I should rue it. But I can't say I have ever gone as far as that. Not to date, anyway. Perhaps I may some day, when I start reading Latin to pass the time.

The adventure grew more interesting to me after the policeman and detectives had one by one all cleared off. The affair was "classed," as the French say in their crime books – I learned my French out of these, and a jolly easy way, too – that is, the police were not going to do anything more in the matter, unless something fresh turned up. And it would have to be something mighty fresh, too, to move them. They had all got so sick of the whole business.

There was just one thing that kept me back. That was, I was nearly sure that Elsie's grandfather had something to do with the whole series of crimes of which the death of poor Harry was only the last and the most senseless. Perhaps not Mr. Stennis directly, but somebody about Deep Moat Grange. So, of course, I did not want to bring Elsie into it if I could help it. Because if her grandfather was a murderer, and if all the missing drovers and absconding cattle dealers were laid to his account, and he hanged for it, it would be clearly impossible for Elsie to go on living with Nance Edgar at the Bridge End. And as I was not yet ready to make other arrangements for her (besides being mortally afraid of the curate), I said nothing to any one – least of all to Elsie herself.

I think I had suspected everybody for miles round in turn – from Mr. Codling the policeman to the vicar himself. As for poor Mr. Ball, I had him so completely under observation, and was so sure of his guilt, that when the unfortunate bailiff went out only to fodder the cattle, I followed stealthily in his footsteps, sure that the secret of the mystery lay in the range of cattle sheds or under the pigs' feeding troughs. In the end I only managed to get a welting from father for coming home all muddy from head to foot – and not pleasant mud at that.

But really I did not mind. I was always glad when I got home safe. Now I know that I was taking my life in my hands every minute. Even then I had glimmerings of the fact. The folks of Breckonside might say, as they always did, that the killing of poor Harry was the work of some chance tramps, who would be far away by the next morning. But putting everything together, just as Sherlock Holmes used to do, I couldn't make it out at all. I had his spirit, but not his luck – no, not by any means his luck.

This, however, was what I made out. Harry had jogged on till he met with some one whom he knew, that is, almost immediately after he parted with Davie Elshiner, the poacher. He had talked, parleyed, and then accepted company. Then some one of these, sitting on the back seat of the dog cart, had covered up his mouth and butchered him most foully. After that no more was to be learned. The light vehicle which had bounded from side to side of the narrow drove-road had certainly been empty. I am no Sherlock Holmes, but my father and I know about horses and local conveyances. And we could see by the rebounding, the one wheel climbing the bank, and the other sinking in the slough, that if any one had been inside – nay any thing, the contents of the cart, be they what they would, must have been emptied out.

But Harry, the mail bags, even the parcels for Bewick, had completely disappeared. Nothing except the empty cart and the broad plane-tree leaves were ever seen again. It seemed so simple a thing to trace – a dead body, accounted no easy thing to make away with even professionally, a dozen bags of letters – many with negotiable values, of which the issuing bank had, luckily, reserved the numbers – tobacco in tins, cigarettes in boxes, sweets, sugar in cones, even a Stilton cheese for the old bachelor, Major Templand (retired), who cried out more about the loss of his Welsh rabbit than all the others put together. Clues – there were balls and wads of clues! Only, none of them led anywhere. Neither did the woods, through which there was no track of anything previous to those made by Mr. Stennis's pony the following day. Nothing either way along the road. No, I could put my hand on nothing and nobody. And I gave it up at last, sure nevertheless that it was somewhere about the house of Deep Moat that the solution must be looked for.

And, indeed, some light, such as it was, came from the last quarter from which it could be expected.

Mr. Ablethorpe arrived one fine summer afternoon at our place in Breckonside. I was playing in the backyard, half a dozen dogs tumbling over me. It had been intended that I should go out that afternoon with a van, but somehow one of the men had got back earlier from his morning round, and had been re-dispatched as more trustworthy. Also idleness in a boy was bad enough, but in a man paid weekly wages – insupportable.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Yarrow," cried the curate in his hearty voice, loud but not a bit preachy – I give him that due – "can I have your Joe an hour or two?"

"Have him and keep him, the lazy whelp," cried my father from the back shop, where he was busy writing up his books in his shirt sleeves. Then, laying down his pen where it would not roll over the page (which always roused him to crisply expressed anger), he came out to meet the young curate from the neighbouring parish of Breckonton. Upper or Over Breckonton was still more dependent on my father than my native Breckonside. There were other ways of getting supplies at Breckonside, at least for a time. But Over Breckonton was wholly dependent on my father's vans, carrier's carts, and general delivery of goods.

They shook hands with some heartiness. For though my father had a standing quarrel with both vicars he was always on the best of terms with the curates.

"What might you want him for, Mr. Ablethorpe?"

"Oh," said Mr. Ablethorpe, "the farmers are busy with their moor hay, you see, and I thought if Joe and I – "

"Say no more," cried my father, "you shall have him. And if he does not work like a good 'un, you tell it to me, that's all! I see now why the farmers of your parish call you the 'Hayfork' Minister!"

"Oh, they call me that, do they?" said the curate, not at all disguising his pleasure in the nickname, "well, I'm no great preacher, you know. So it is as well to make oneself of use some way!"

"That's right – that's right," cried my father, "I hope you will put a little of that teaching into the lazy bones of my young whelp. Joe! Ah, Joe, you villain! Come here! Don't skulk!"

As my father did really know where I was (and also because I was an obedient boy with a reverence for the fifth commandment of the Decalogue), I came immediately, greatly to the disappointment of the dogs, who thought themselves in for a good long romp. I found Mr. Ablethorpe explaining to my father that we were just going to call in at Brom Common Farm, to give Caleb Fergusson a lift with his hay – that Caleb was an old man, and would be the better of the assistance of two pairs of sturdy arms. Furthermore, it would keep Joe in training for the next cricket match – Breckonton and District v. Upper Dene Hospital it was.

"I don't know exactly how long we shall be, I tell you frankly," said the curate. "If old Caleb has nearly finished, Joe and I may take a walk before coming home. It won't do to have him getting slack, lying about the yard like this."

"That's all right," said my father, who was aching to get back to his books, and wished nothing better than to have me taken off his hands, "all serene! Don't you fret, Mr. Ablethorpe. Joe will be in good keeping along of you. I wish I could say as much of him always. He is a wandering, good-for-nothing wretch!"

That, you see, was my father's way of talking. He didn't mean anything by it. But the words just flowed naturally from him, and he could no more help abusing me, or, indeed, any of his men, than taking a snooze when sleepy in the afternoon.

The curate, who knew that barking keeps the teeth open and so prevents biting, simply laughed and said, "Well, come along, Joe! You are under my care and authority for this day, at any rate."

As for me, I was glad enough. For, but for Elsie, and the thought of my going to college in the late autumn, I liked Mr. Ablethorpe very well, as, for that matter, did nearly every one who knew him – except his vicar, who did not appreciate a young man being so popular; "stealing the hearts of his congregation from him," as he expressed it.

I was still gladder, because I knew that that afternoon there was not the least chance of seeing Elsie. She had gone up to read Latin and piles of hard books with Miss Martha Mustard, the dominie's sister, who was said to be far more learned even than he. At any rate, though not what you would call "honeysuckle sweet," she had at least a far better temper.

The curate and I set out. It was the selfsame road that Elsie and I had taken earlier in the year, on the May morning when we were the first to look inside poor Harry Foster's blood-stained mail cart.

But now the leaves were turning and drying, already brown at the edges, and splotched with yellow and green along the webbing inside. Soon our feet were on the heather, and I watched the curate to see if he would turn his head to take a look across at the little creeper-hidden cot at the Bridge End, where Elsie was not. But either he was on his guard, or he was as well aware as I myself of her absence. At any rate he never turned his head, but swung along with a jolly hillman's stride which it took me all my pith and length of limb to keep pace with.