Читать книгу Dead Man Manor - Valentine Williams - Страница 7

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Mr. Treadgold made his way to his hut in a sobered mood. That face in the tree dwelt unpleasantly in his memory. He was a modern-minded man, but still under the influence of that sombre house, sunk in the silence of slow decay, he found himself thinking of the face he had seen as the incarnation of the evil spirit reputedly haunting the Manor. But then his collector’s enthusiasm came to his rescue. With a delicious thrill he remembered the parcel of stamps in his pocket. He would sit down forthwith with lens and catalogue, he promised himself, and examine his treasure-trove.

But on reaching the log cabin his hopes were dashed by the discovery that it already had an occupant. A hot and dusty young man stood there, gazing about him with every evidence of frank approval. With its grass-green curtains and matting, its furniture and walls of unstained pine, and its big open fireplace, the hut was very attractive, boasting, too, such luxuries as a bathroom and electric light—from the distance the cough of a Diesel engine pulsated rhythmically over the quiet evening air. The young man had apparently just arrived, for his baggage was draped about his feet and he grasped the canvas-covered sections of a fishing-rod strapped together.

Mr. Treadgold had forgotten all about his roommate. The stamps would have to wait, he told himself with a sigh.

‘Dr. Wood?’ he enquired politely.

‘The old physician himself,’ the other retorted, and added, ‘Mr. Treadgold, I presume?’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Like Stanley and Livingstone, isn’t it? Only for Darkest Africa, read Darkest Quebec!’ He doffed his battered felt and mopped his brow. ‘Gosh, what a day this has been!’

He was a strapping young man, broad of shoulder and lean of hip, with a merry eye and the nonchalant, good-humoured air which is frequently found in association with freckles and a snub nose.

‘What about a small drink?’ said Mr. Treadgold.

‘Will a duck swim?’ the other declared with feeling.

With the calm deliberation which marked his every movement, his companion went to an open suitcase on one of the beds, slipped his parcel of stamps out of sight under a shirt and came back with a bottle of whisky and a corkscrew. Glasses, a bowl of ice, and a siphon were on the table. He drew the cork, measured out two drinks, and silently handed the doctor his tumbler.

‘Here’s good fishing!’ Wood exclaimed, throwing himself full length in a chair and raising his glass. A staid nod acknowledged the toast and in a silence broken only by the chatter of the birds and the faint grunt of the Diesel the two men drank.

Mr. Treadgold put down his glass and, drawing up a chair to the table, seated himself and let his glance range unobtrusively over the new arrival.

‘So your car broke down?’ he observed urbanely.

The young man groaned. ‘Wouldn’t it happen to me? The ignition coil burnt out. The gardien’s gone to try and raise a team of horses to pull it clear of the road, as it’s blocking the traffic.’

‘The road was clear when I came through the woods just now,’ said Mr. Treadgold, ‘so I fancy they’ve towed it away. It’s a bad place to be stalled in . . .’

‘You’re telling me!’ Wood declared with great emphasis. ‘Didn’t I carry those darn bags of mine about a mile into camp? But how did you hear about it?’

His companion laughed. ‘I didn’t. I merely inferred it.’

‘You inferred it?’ The doctor was puzzled.

Mr. Treadgold smiled. ‘As the immortal author of Tristram Shandy remarks, “Give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside!” It’s really very simple. You’ve obviously had a hot and dusty tramp and I perceive marks of black engine grease, not only on your hands, but also high up on the right sleeve of your coat, suggesting that you’ve been exploring under the bonnet. I knew that you were arriving by car, so I naturally reasoned that your car had broken down.’

The young man was blankly surveying his grimy hands. ‘That’s all right as far as it goes,’ he remarked. ‘But you said I was stalled in the woods. How did you know that?’

Mr. Treadgold laughed. ‘Well, you have a leaf caught in the turn-up of your right trouser leg and your shoes are covered with red dust, which tells me that you walked in, not from the main road, where the dust is white, but from that trail through the woods, which is of red sand!’

Wood guffawed. ‘Swell!’ he chortled. ‘Gosh, you ought to be a detective. Or perhaps you are?’

The other shook his head, smiling. ‘Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid.’

Wood grinned. ‘I didn’t think so myself. You look more like a business man . . .’

‘I hope so . . .’

The doctor cocked his head on one side, dandling his glass. ‘Advertising?’

‘Not enough imagination!’

‘Manufacturer?’

‘Let’s say a simple tradesman!’

‘You mean you have a shop?’

‘Yes, indeed!’

The young man ran an appraising eye over the blue pull-over, the well-cut Harris tweeds, the neat stockings and brogues. ‘I bet it’s a swagger joint?’ he hazarded.

Mr. Treadgold chuckled. ‘It’s not bad!’

‘New York? Fifth Avenue?’

‘Near enough to the Avenue to be fashionable!’

The young man sat up abruptly. ‘It isn’t a speak, or what do they call ’em since Repeal, a club?’

His companion shouted with laughter. ‘That’s good, that’s devilish good. I must tell that to Henry. Henry’s my partner. He can see all sides of a question except the funny side. Oh, dear me!’ He held his hands to his ribs and laughed until the tears stood in his eyes. ‘A speak, indeed! I believe Henry would call you out for that! No, young man, I don’t keep a speakeasy, whatever my appearance suggests. I ply a trade which is every bit as essential to the welfare of the community as yours. And like yours it fulfils a Biblical precept. You visit the sick, I clothe the naked!’

The doctor stared. ‘I’m a tailor,’ said Mr. Treadgold and drank.

‘Treadgold?’ exclaimed the young man suddenly. ‘Not of Bowl, Treadgold and Flack, is it?’

‘I’m the senior partner. Why? You’re not a customer of ours, are you?’ He looked at him keenly. ‘I don’t want to be personal, but surely that suit didn’t come from our place?’

‘Lord, I can’t afford your prices,’ was the cheerful answer. ‘Ready for wear with an extra pair of pants is all poor old Doc Wood can manage, yes, by crikey! But I’ve heard of your firm all my life. My granddad, Dr. Caleb Wood, who was quite a headliner in the New York of his days, used to get his clothes at your place when it was on Lower Broadway . . .’

‘So you’re Caleb Wood’s grandson, eh?’ said Mr. Treadgold with approval. ‘I remember the old gentleman well. A great character, as you say.’

‘He was full of stories of the old guy who ran your outfit. A crusty old devil called Oliver Bowl, as British as the Bank of England and a regular sketch!’

‘My cousin,’ returned the other, not without dignity. ‘Ours is an old-established business, young man. It has been a going concern in London since the year 1807 and since 1857 in New York, and there’s never been a time, since my great-grandfather, the first Treadgold, joined Josiah Bowl, the founder, as his cutter, that there hasn’t been a Treadgold connected with it. My old guv’nor, dead these twenty years, bless him, joined Cousin Oliver at the New York branch ’way back in ’75 when I was still in diapers. My second name commemorates the founder—my full name is Horace Bowl Treadgold and I represent the fifth generation in the one business. Not so bad, eh?’

The doctor wagged his head, impressed. ‘I should say not. So you’re a fisherman?’

Mr. Treadgold coughed. ‘Why, yes!’

‘It’s a grand hobby, don’t you think?’

‘Of course. Although, mind you, a fellow can have other hobbies besides . . .’

‘Have you? What, for instance?’

‘Stamps!’

The snub nose wrinkled disapproval. ‘Pretty staid, isn’t it?’

Mr. Treadgold’s laugh was quite good-humoured. ‘To quote Tristram Shandy again, which I must warn you I do fairly often, as it’s my favourite book, “So long as a man rides his hobby-horse peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him—pray, sir, what have either you or I to do with it?’” He chuckled. ‘But let that go. I’m also interested, albeit in quite an amateur way, in criminology. Does that meet with your commendation?’

‘It’s a bit more red-blooded, anyway,’ said the young man more graciously. ‘So you were trying out your what-do-you-call-it—your inductive reasoning on me, eh?’

‘Deductive,’ Mr. Treadgold amended, and sighed. ‘It’s a bad habit of mine, I’m afraid!’

Wood laughed. ‘Well, I give you fair warning, Mr. Treadgold, you’re going to have the sudden death of a number of fine trout to investigate. By the way, what fly did you think of using?’

The other seemed slightly taken aback. ‘Fly?’ he murmured vaguely.

‘They use a Montreal or a Silver Doctor mostly round here, the gardien says,’ Wood rattled on. ‘But take my tip and stick to a Brown Hackle!’

Mr. Treadgold bit his moustache. ‘It’s rather a long time since I did any fishing and I’m probably a bit rusty,’ he observed tentatively. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind my going along with you once or twice until I get the hang of it again.’

‘Sure. Any time you say. By the way, my French isn’t so hot. How’s yours?’

‘I can make myself understood.’

‘Then you’re hereby appointed interpreter to this outfit. Gosh, is that the supper bell already? I’ve got to clean up . . .’

There was no formality about the evening meal. People sat down anywhere at the long table in their fishing-clothes. Madeleine, the Angel’s bespectacled and bustling daughter, was already serving the soup when Mr. Treadgold and the doctor arrived. Tisserand, Monsieur Forgeron’s head clerk from Quebec, who was spending his summer vacation at the camp, rose up from the head of the table to greet them. Then he introduced them in turn to his wife and two plain daughters and to their fellow guests—General Rees, a rather irascible-looking Englishman, and his wife, Lady Gwendolen, parents of the small boy, whom everybody called ‘Shiner’; the Montgomerys, a middle-aged American married couple; and lastly Adams, who, holding out a welcoming hand, made room for Mr. Treadgold beside him.

Mr. Treadgold found himself instinctively drawn to Adams. The man had natural charm. He seemed to possess an effortless knack of drawing people out, of making them like him. The whole conversation at table centred about him. In faultless French he chatted with the Tisserands, making gallant remarks to the drab daughters, chaffing old Tisserand on his fishing prowess, and, dropping into English, talked fish with the General or Wall Street prices with Montgomery. Polished and highly intelligent, he was an excellent conversationalist and appeared to know everyone and to have been everywhere. The small Rees boy was obviously devoted to him and Mr. Treadgold was quite touched to see the trouble Adams took to interest the youngster and put him at his ease. Shiner rattled away to him freely—Adams and Batisse, the guide who usually accompanied them on their fishing excursions, seemed to be his two great heroes.

‘And what did you do with yourself all the afternoon?’ Adams took advantage of a lull in the conversation to ask Mr. Treadgold.

The latter explained that he had strolled as far as the village—he was careful not to allude to his business with Ruffier. ‘And, by the by,’ he went on, ‘I had a curious adventure. . .’

His opening secured immediate silence in which he told his story. ‘I gather I had a narrow escape from closer acquaintance with a homicidal lunatic,’ he concluded.

Adams laughed rather contemptuously. ‘He’s no more a lunatic than you are, unless you call an habitual drunkard a lunatic!’

‘You know this man?’ Mr. Treadgold asked, in surprise.

‘Sure. I used to visit at the Manor when the old seigneur was alive—that’s more than twenty years ago. Even then this ruffian—Le Borgne, as they call him—was the village ne’er-do-well, a poacher and what have you, and half the time soused to the eyeballs with whisky blanc, if you know what that is!’

‘It’s spirit made from corn,’ Shiner piped up. ‘Batisse drinks it. . .’

‘I thought he’d died of drink years ago,’ Adams continued to Mr. Treadgold. ‘I’m very interested by what you tell me—very interested!’ He fell silent, staring at his plate.

‘It seems a crime that such a fine old house should fall into ruin,’ Mr. Treadgold remarked. ‘The present seigneur lives abroad, they tell me. . .’

His neighbour nodded. ‘Yes. In Paris.’ And he added rather grimly, ‘If he’s wise, he’ll stop there!’

Mr. Treadgold elevated his eyebrows. ‘What’s the trouble?’

Adams shrugged. ‘One of those cases of a gentleman leaving his country for his country’s good, shall we say?’ He relapsed into silence.

The General’s metallic voice rang out. ‘Whether this Le Borgne, or whatever his name is, is mad or sane, it’s a pretty state of things, I must say, to have a drunken savage roving round the camp. A poacher, too, by the Lord Harry! Shiner,’ he cried to his son, ‘don’t let me catch you going near this house, do you hear?’

‘Okeh, Dad,’ said the boy composedly.

‘I’m told that the villagers believe the Manor’s haunted,’ Mr. Treadgold observed mildly.

Shiner caught his breath. ‘Haunted?’ he echoed, saucer-eyed.

‘I think that old What’s-His-Name is the ghost, myself,’ Mr. Treadgold opined shrewdly. ‘But the story is that the spirit of one of the old seigneurs walks the empty rooms at night. . .’

Adams looked up quickly. ‘Do you mean to say that footsteps have actually been heard in the Manor?’ he demanded.

Mr. Treadgold laughed. ‘That’s the gossip. I don’t know anything about it, and as things are I certainly don’t propose to find out!’

The lawyer did not echo his laugh. It appeared to Mr. Treadgold that there were lines on either side of the cleanly chiselled mouth which he had not observed there before, as though the smooth-shaven face had suddenly hardened. Their further conversation was broken off by the company rising from the table. Joyfully Mr. Treadgold skipped off to his stamps.