RETURNING HOME WITH the Miss Tremletts, Thomasina was not at all surprised to discover Peter Brandon upon the doorstep. Not quite literally upon the actual step of course, but prowling up and down with the obvious intention of intercepting them. Since she desired nothing better than an opportunity of telling him just what she felt about his following her to Deep End, she accepted an invitation to go for a walk with no more than a single indignant glance. She had her back to the Miss Tremletts at the time, so there was nothing to chill the warm sympathy with which her departure with Peter was regarded. It was as well that Miss Elaine and Miss Gwyneth could have no idea of the really furious antagonisms which were surging up in the two young people whom they followed with so kindly and sentimental a gaze.
They were no sooner screened by an intervening clump of evergreen than Thomasina turned a fiery glance upon her companion. It told her what indeed she had already guessed, that here was no abashed penitent, but a stiff-necked young man in quite as bad a temper as herself. And worse, because she didn’t go into black rages, and Peter did. He was in one now, and they always made him very difficult to deal with. She began to review her armoury. A good vigorous attack would at any rate bring things out into the open. And he needn’t think she was going to let him get in first, because she wasn’t. A fine colour mounted to her cheeks. The grey eyes which at least two young men, undeterred by the limited number of available rhymes, had compared—in verse—to stars were trained upon him.
‘Why on earth did you come here?’
Height confers a most unfair advantage. Peter could look down upon the top of her head. He did this briefly, and countered with,
‘For that matter, why did you?’
‘Look here, Peter—’
‘I haven’t the slightest desire to look at you! I haven’t got the patience! You stir up this idiotic business about Anna Ball—well, I was against that all along, wasn’t I? The girl probably had some perfectly good reason for getting off the map, and if you ever do find her, I’ve no doubt she won’t be best pleased. Well, then you go grubbing round after her—’
‘I do not go grubbing round!’
He raised his voice and swept on.
‘You hire a private detective, and she has no sooner got on to the job than you come blundering down here, and get in her way, and run yourself into God knows what unpleasantness. That chap Abbott’s down here, isn’t he? And there’s been a bank robbery and a double murder in Ledlington. I suppose you do know that?’
Thomasina put her chin in the air.
‘Considering Frank and a Ledlington Inspector are over here about it this morning, I suppose I do.’
‘And why are they over here about it?’
She said in a voice that was more thoughtful than angry,
‘They want to know who spent a pound note in a fancy-work shop in Dedham, and whether there was anything odd about it. And they want to know whether anyone was in Ledlington yesterday afternoon—and of course quite a lot of them were.’
‘Who?’
A gleam of humour mitigated her glance.
‘Not me. Disappointing for you, but there it is.’
‘I said who.’
‘Oh, Miss Gwyneth—but I don’t think she’d be any good at robbing a bank—not really, you know. And Miss Silver, and that funny little Mr Remington, and the bird-watching man who lives in the other wing at Deepe House with all the windows boarded up, and Mr Craddock. They were all there, but none of them seems to have any clear idea of just where they were or what they were doing when the bank was being robbed. Miss Elaine and I have perfect alibis, because by three o’clock she had stopped resting and was telling me all about her mother making a phonograph record when they were first invented—Edison and all that you know—and how she stopped because she was nervous and gave a little laugh right in the middle of her song, and of course it came out in the record. Well, nobody could make up an alibi like that if it wasn’t true, could they? So Miss Elaine and I are safe.’
He was frowning very deeply indeed.
‘Why do they think anyone here was mixed up in it?’
Thomasina was serious too.
‘I don’t know whether they do—I suppose they must. It would be something to do with the pound note they were asking about. They didn’t say, of course, but there was that robbery near London about a month ago—what was the name of the place—Enderby Green. The bank manager was murdered there too, and I’ve got an idea it had something to do with that. The note they were asking about couldn’t be one that was robbed at Ledlington yesterday, because it was part of the takings of this fancy-work shop at Dedham as far back as Tuesday. There seemed to be something they could recognize it by, and of course if they thought anyone from here had paid it in, they would naturally want to know what we were all doing yesterday afternoon. But perhaps I had better tell you all about it.’
‘Perhaps you had.’ It wasn’t said in at all an encouraging sort of voice.
Thomasina was under no illusion about Peter Brandon. Children always know what people are like. Sometimes they forget later on, but she had known Peter when she was in her pram, and she hadn’t got a forgetting nature. She knew just how obstinate and opinionated and odious he could be. She considered that he was exhibiting all these unpleasant qualities in a highly characteristic manner, but as she really did want to tell him about the interview with the police she refrained herself and plunged into narrative. She made it a lively one. By the time she had finished Peter might almost have been there.
‘And when Pompous Peveril said they hadn’t got anything to hide, Mr Robinson laughed as if he thought there was something very funny about that, and Mrs Craddock fainted.’
They discussed all the implications of John Robinson’s laugh and Emily Craddock’s swoon, emerging upon a worse battle ground than before, it being Peter’s declared opinion that the whole thing was so fishy that it stank, and that the sooner she got out of it the better.
Thomasina re-entered the fray with zest.
‘If there’s a stink, it’s because there’s something that wants clearing up, which is a reason for staying, not for running away.
Peter stuck his hands in his pockets.
‘You know, I think I should leave garbage to the garbage-man—in this case the police. More efficient and less likely to get themselves and everyone else into a mess. There’s a train from Ledlington at three-five. Go home and pack your things, and we’ll go out by the bus and catch it.’
Thomasina told herself afterwards that she had been perfectly calm and dignified. She said,
‘If you think you can look up trains and buses that I don’t want and make me take them, you had better start thinking all over again, because I’m staying here.’
She did admit in the privacy of her own thought that she ought to have left it at that. It was calm, it was adequate, and if Peter wasn’t set down by it he ought to have been. Unfortunately, instead of stopping she went on. She wasn’t quite sure what she actually said, because her feelings overcame her, but she did remember that she had stamped her foot, and that there had been an access of angry tears when she came to the part about Anna. Because, somehow or other, that was where they had got back to—Anna Ball, and why had she disappeared, and where was she now?
‘And don’t you see, Peter, if there really is someone here who is going round robbing banks and shooting people—don’t you see that something perfectly dreadful might have happened to Anna? Just because of that. You called her a Nosey Parker yourself—you know you did. And she was! She always wanted to know everything. I used to be sorry for her about it and think it was because she hadn’t got a family or any affairs of her own to be interested in. But don’t you see, if she was like that—and she was—don’t you see, it might have got her into finding out something—something dangerous. Don’t you see that she might have given someone a dreadful reason for getting rid of her?’
Peter took his hands out of his pockets and caught hold of her wrists.
‘Suppose it’s true—suppose she did get herself murdered. I don’t believe it for a moment, but just suppose she did. What do you propose to do about it—go poking your nose in where you’re not wanted, and get yourself murdered too? You might, you know. If you tried hard enough, and if there really is a murderer camouflaging himself in this barmy Colony. I suppose you expect me to stand by and let you do it. Well, I’m not going to, and that’s flat!’
‘Let me go!’
She might just as well not have spoken.
‘It’s a job for the police, and you know it! There’s nothing you could do if you stayed here for a month of Sundays!’
‘Well then, there is!’
‘As what?’
If she had been a little cooler, or if he hadn’t been holding her, she might not have gone on, but the things that were bubbling up in her were too hot and angry. They came pouring out.
‘Someone has got to find out about Anna. It’s nearly five months, and perhaps she’s dead. Or shut up. It keeps coming over me. Suppose she found out something and they’ve got her shut up in the ruined part of the house. No one goes in there except that Craddock man. It’s kept locked off because it’s not supposed to be safe for the children. Those old houses have cellars. Suppose Anna is there, locked up—how can I go away? I think about it in the night. Suppose she was locked up in one of those cellars, and everyone said like you do, “Oh, well, she just doesn’t choose to write.” I keep thinking about that, and about our all just getting up in the morning, and having our meals, and going out and coming in, and nobody bothering about her or—or caring whether she is dead or alive. Peter, it’s no use—I’ve got to do something about it. And—and—there’s someone coming—let go of me at once, or I’ll scream!’
‘And give me in charge for assault?’
She said in a quick different voice,
‘It would serve you right. Peter, let go—there is someone coming!’
John Robinson came up through the wood. He did not watch birds for nothing. He was instantly aware that he had interrupted a quarrel. He observed the traces of Thomasina’s angry tears, the brightness of her eyes, and the very becoming colour which deepened at his approach. He observed a broken twig and a crushed leaf about midway between her and the tall frowning young man, and deduced without difficulty that he had just stepped back from—no, not an embrace. Miss Thomasina Elliot was rubbing her wrists. The fellow had been holding her, and he had stepped back. It became necessary to discover whether this was a case of damsel in distress. He therefore checked a little in his walk, allowed a smile to filter through his beard, and addressed Thomasina.
‘Taking the air after our grilling by the police? There’s quite a good view at the top of the hill. Have you been up there yet?’ His voice was slow and pleasant, the country accent much less marked than it had been at Deepe House.
Thomasina was rather pleased with the way she managed to smile and say,
‘Yes, the children took me. I haven’t time to go on this morning. Peter and I have to be getting back.’
So the young man was a friend. Mr Robinson acknowledged the half introduction with another smile and went on his way whistling melodiously.
Thomasina set off at a brisk pace down the hill without looking round to see whether Peter was following her. She wouldn’t run, because if she did he might run after her. She would just walk as fast as she could and not look round, and whether he overtook her or not, she did not intend to say another single word.
But when, within sight of the Miss Tremletts’ cottage, she broke her resolution and looked back, there was no sign of Peter Brandon.