Читать книгу Sea Fog - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 7

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I was certainly at the age in which it takes a great deal to interfere with a healthy and growing lad’s appetite, and though I had been more than a little upset by the events of the morning, I was fully prepared to do justice to the breakfast which was presently set before my host and myself by a motherly-looking woman, his housekeeper, in a bright little parlour overlooking the garden. He was a tactful man, this Captain Trace; he not only made me feel at home with him, but kept off the affair in which I had just so unwillingly figured; instead of talking about that, he talked of Andrew Macpherson and my leaving him, and pretty soon he came to a direct question.

“So you want to go to sea, Tom Crowe?” he asked. “Made up your mind, eh?”

“I don’t want an indoor life,” said I. “There were times when I felt I’d burst, there in the grocery shop. Mr. Macpherson, he said it was in my blood.”

“Very like,” he agreed. “You’re not the sort to spend your time weighing pounds of sugar. Well, there is the sea. And there’s the Army. Ever thought of that, Tom?”

“A soldier!” I exclaimed. “No!”

“That was my line,” said he. “I was at a bit of a loose end when I was your age. My father had put me to the engineering—paid a pretty stiff premium, too, with me. But when my time was through—no work! Not a job to hand anywhere. And I wasn’t one for waiting, or idling. I took the Queen’s shilling—meaning to get on. Well, I did get on. Lance-corporal in nine, full corporal in twelve months; sergeant in two years. Then the Boer War came, and I got my chance—got my commission, you know. And in due time I got my company. Pretty good innings, eh?” he continued, laughing. “Raw recruit at twenty; captain at thirty. I might have been a general, or perhaps a field-marshal—who knows?—if I’d stopped in!”

“Why didn’t you?” I made bold to ask him.

He laughed again and made a wry face.

“Why, to tell you the truth, my lad, I got very badly wounded in the last stage of the Boer War, after I’d got my commission,” he answered. “And I’ve never really got over it. I carried on all right in peace-time, but the effects were there, and are there. And I had a bit of money left me, and so I thought well to give up soldiering and take to a quiet life—here.”

He said nothing then, and it was not until some time afterwards that I found out that when he got his wounds he also got the Victoria Cross.

“It’s very nice here, too,” I remarked, feeling it polite to compliment him on his situation.

“Yes, I took a lot of trouble to make it so,” he said. “It was a ramshackle old spot when I bought it. And I’ve got some fine prize fowls, and I keep bees, and I have a bit of a boat, a small yacht, as some folk would call it, down at Bosham—oh yes, it’s very pleasant, Tom, very pleasant!”

But as he said this he sighed, as if there was something behind the pleasantness; also, he became silent, eating his eggs and bacon with his eyes on his plate.

“Mr. Macpherson says my father was a sailor,” said I. “He was in the Royal Navy.”

“Ah!” he answered, looking up. “That accounts for your wish for the sea, no doubt. But if you want adventure, my lad, I think you’ll not get it there—nowadays. Travel, perhaps; but the good old days are gone. A fine, big sailing ship, now, trading to the far-off places——”

He checked himself at the sound of voices and footsteps outside, and both of us turning to the open window, we saw, coming in at the garden gate, two men, at sight of whom Captain Trace made a gesture suggestive of good-tempered annoyance.

“Tom!” he said. “Here are the two biggest gossips and tittle-tattlers in these parts—and that’s saying a good deal! They’re after you, my lad!—Preece has no doubt told them what’s occurred, and they want to see and question the eyewitness. Keep close!—don’t tell them anything—I’ll settle them. One of them, the big man,” he went on in a whisper, “is a sort of retired gentleman, name of Fewster; the other, the little man, Chissick, is a builder and contractor—and they’re both the sort who like news, and love to retail it. Say nothing!”

The callers were in the little hall by that time, and presently the housekeeper opened the parlour door and showed them in. I saw at once that they were of the species that scorns ceremony, and as each gave a careless nod to my host and dropped into the easiest chairs they could find, I took a good look at them. Fewster was a big, heavily built man of a solemn cast of countenance, and small, ferrety eyes; the sort of man who carries a stout stick, crosses his fat hands on it, and rests a double chin on his hands. Chissick was a rosy-faced fellow, alert, sly in expression, with a trick of looking quickly about him that reminded me of a perky cock-robin. And both men, after a mere glance of greeting to the man whose privacy they had so summarily invaded, fixed their eyes on me.

“Morning, Captain!” said Chissick cheerily. “Strange doings in the parish this morning! That’ll be the young man, I suppose?”

Captain Trace rose from the table as if he knew exactly what to do in these circumstances. Without replying to Chissick’s question, he went straight to a sideboard and to a spirit-case that stood in its centre, and, mixing two glasses of whisky-and-soda, silently handed one to each of his guests. Each man made some remark about the hour being early, but each took the glass.

“Best respects, Trace,” muttered Fewster. “As Chissick says, that’ll be the young man that we’ve heard of from Preece?”

“That’s certainly the young man you’ve heard of from Preece,” agreed Trace. “You seem curious about him!”

“Good ground for curiosity, I think, when there’s murder, genuine bloody murder, done at your very doors!” observed Chissick. “Now, what did you really see, young fellow? Haven’t you got a single clue?”

I gave Chissick a quiet, steady look; then, just to let Trace see that I was no fool, I spoke before he could.

“I mustn’t say!” said I. “The matter’s in the hands of the police. It’s sub judice!”

The man’s eyebrows went up as Trace laughed, and he looked from me to my host, and from him to Fewster, and back at me, viewing me from head to foot.

“Latin, eh?” he exclaimed. “Oh—oh! And how does a young fellow that talks Latin as natural as all that come to be sleeping out in an old mill—what?”

“That’s sub judice too, Chissick,” said Trace. “Come!—this boy can’t tell you anything. You know there’s got to be an inquest to-morrow—he’ll have to tell his tale then. You’ll hear it, all in good time—you’re sure to be on the jury.”

I was pretty quick of observation, for a youngster, and I saw that our visitors were somewhat taken aback by this: in each man’s face there was an expression that seemed to go deeper than mere curiosity; it appeared to me that both were anxious—with an unusual sort of anxiety, too.

“I don’t know about that—about waiting, Captain,” remarked Fewster, after a pause. “Here’s murder been done—at our doors!—and this young fellow seems, according to what I’m told, to be the only person that can say anything about it. As—as what I may call citizens, and if that isn’t the right term, ratepayers——”

“That’s the term,” interrupted Chissick. “Ratepayers! Two biggest ratepayers in the parish, for that matter!”

“As ratepayers,” continued Fewster, with an approving nod at his fellow-caller, “as ratepayers, and the most considerable ratepayers, I contend that we’ve a right to what I may call immediate information! And what I want to know from that young man is—can he recognise and identify the murderer?”

“Just so!” murmured Chissick. “Good! Couldn’t have been better put! Can he?”

Trace drank off his coffee and, pushing the cup aside, rose to his feet.

“He’s not going to tell you!” he answered. “That, too, ’ll have to wait till the inquest. It’s all sub judice, gentlemen—good term that! We’re precluded from speaking—till the law bids us speak. We’ll speak hard enough then!”

The two visitors looked at each other, and then at me and Trace, sourly.

“Not going to say anything, then?” asked Chissick. “Me and Mr. Fewster’s the two most important people in the place, Captain!”

“I dare say!” agreed Trace good-humouredly. “But—this lad’s mouth is sealed, till the coroner opens it. And his mouth’s just now in my charge—and I’ll keep it sealed!”

Fewster took his double chin off his hands, and his hands off his stick, and rose slowly.

“In my opinion,” he said gruffly, “in my opinion, Captain, that young fellow ’ud do better if he were assisting the police people to find the murderer! There’s railway stations at hand—three of ’em—and they ought to be watched! Murder is a very serious thing, and it isn’t pleasant for law-abiding people to know that a murderer is at large! And with a knife too!”

Trace picked up his cap and glanced at the door.

“I quite agree with you, gentlemen,” he said. “But you’ve come to the wrong shop! Try Preece. He’s the representative of the law! Go and put your views before him. Sorry—but I’ve got to go out.”

Whether the two men took this as polite hint or plain dismissal, I don’t know; they went away down the village street, talking in confidential whispers. When they were outside the gate I looked at Trace.

“What did they really want?” I asked him.

“Can’t tell you, my lad!” he answered. “Except that they wanted to turn you inside out, to ascertain for themselves how much you knew and didn’t know. But why?—ah, that’s what I don’t know! Deep fellows, both of ’em—crafty. Last men in this village to tell anything to. But come along with me—I’m going to see an old friend of mine before whom you can talk as freely as you like; he’s confined to a wheeled chair nowadays, and can’t get out, and a bit of talk’s a godsend to him—what’s more, he’s a wise man and keeps counsel.”

We went out through the garden and up the street towards the foot of the hill down which I had run that morning. At the gate of the farmstead where I had found him in my hurried rush for help, Trace turned in.

“This is Mr. Hentidge’s farm,” he said as we crossed the garden. “He’s a very, very old man, over eighty years of age, Tom. Lost the use of his legs, and has to be wheeled about; spends his time by the fire in winter and sitting out in the sun in summer. But wonderful in his faculties—clever as ever! Lost nothing but locomotive power, eh? Marvellous old chap! That was his daughter you saw me talking to this morning. Equally marvellous woman! Manages—everything!”

I saw at once that Trace was very much at home in the Hentidge farmstead. Without any ceremony of knocking at the door, he led me into the house and through a great stone-walled hall into a living-room that was half parlour, half kitchen. The woman I had seen that morning was shelling garden peas at a table in the wide window-place; near her, a newspaper in his hands, and in a big wheeled chair, sat an old man, who, I saw at once, had in his time been a man of unusual height and breadth, and still gave one the impression of uncommon vitality. He was reading his paper without spectacles, and the eyes he turned on me as Trace drew me forward were as brilliant as they were black. The woman, too, turned her eyes on me, and I saw that they were like her father’s, brilliantly dark and large; I saw, too, that she was even handsomer than I had thought her in the early morning light. She paused in her task as we entered, and, going over to the wheeled chair, whispered something to its occupant. The old man nodded, still looking at me.

“Just so, just so, my girl!” he said. “I understand! So that’s the young man, is it, Trace? Sit you down, young fellow.”

Trace pulled a couple of chairs close to Mr. Hentidge, and motioned me to take one of them.

“This is the chap, Mr. Hentidge,” he answered. “He’s told me all about himself, and I’ll vouch for him—I know his late master at Horsham. Now, Tom,” he went on, “you can tell Mr. Hentidge all about it, without fear—it’ll not go outside these walls. And Mr. Hentidge can, maybe, throw a bit of light on things—he knows that old mill and its surroundings better than anybody in the place. Begin at the very start of things, my lad.”

I told them the story as I had already told it to Trace and the police-sergeant. I had a good audience. The old man never took his eyes off my face. His daughter, leaning over the back of his chair, watched me from start to finish; she had an unusually mobile face, and it flushed or paled according to the quality of my story. I think, big and fine woman though she was, that she was marvelling how a boy of eighteen should have seen this horror and remain so very matter-of-fact about it. When I came to the actual murder she drew in her breath sharply. But the old man listened unmoved, taking in every point and nodding his head now and then. And when I made an end he immediately asked me a sharp question:

“You never saw the man’s face, boy—the man that made off?”

“No, sir,” said I. “The mist was too thick.”

“And he went off—which way, now?—which way from the mill?”

“Due east, sir—towards where the sun had risen.”

He nodded at that as if it was exactly the answer that he had expected to get.

“Aye!” he murmured, as if to himself. “He would—if he knew these parts. The woods are thick on that side. But——”

He relapsed into what was evidently a mood of deep reflection, which continued so long that at last his daughter, with a look at Trace, laid her hand on his shoulder.

“What are you thinking about, father?” she asked.

Mr. Hentidge started and looked up, first at her, then at us.

“I was thinking back, my girl!” he said, with a smile. “Many a long year ago, there was a man came into these parts, a seafaring man——”

What more he was about to tell us I did not learn at that time. My chair faced the window, and just then, chancing to look that way, I saw a man going slowly past on the road outside, and in him recognised my interrogator of Petworth churchyard.