The Kang-He Vase/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE LADY OF THE GRANGE
We each got a hand under Uncle Joseph’s fat arms, and with some difficulty pulled his heavy body into a sitting posture against the door-post. After some sighings and groanings he came round a little, rolled his eyes at us, and shaking his head, contrived to point a hand into the bedroom, towards his old travelling bag, which stood on a corner of the dressing-table.
“In bag!” he murmured faintly. “Bottle—brandy—glass.”
I hurried into the room, opened the bag, found a large black bottle, and snatching up a tumbler from the washstand, went back to him.
“Pour it out!” he whispered. “Ready mixed—brandy and water—forced to keep it by me—case of—attacks like this.”
He took a good swig of his medicine when I gave him the tumbler, and presently seemed to revive; certainly he looked at us with more assurance.
“Weak heart, Keziah!” he announced, apologetically. “Suffered from it for some time. Can’t stand being woke up suddenly, nor yet startled. And—you gave me a shock!”
“Do you know anything of that man?” demanded Keziah. “You’ve heard him described—Ben described him! Come, now!”
He took another hearty pull at the brandy and water, got up from his undignified position, and shook his head.
“No!” he answered, suavely. “Oh, no, Keziah and Benjamin, I don’t know the man you speak of!—how should I? A man with gold rings in his ears, and a scar across his left cheek, say you? Oh, no, I don’t know any such person! How should I?—I ain’t been in these parts for a many years, as you know.”
“This man isn’t of these parts,” snapped Keziah. “He’s as much a stranger as you are. And you were out twice yesterday and may have met him. Anyway, there’s been murder done at my very door, and in the morning the police’ll want to know a good deal that I can’t tell them, whether you can or not! Come away, Ben, and get to your bed.”
She stalked out of the room, leaving Uncle Joseph, glass in hand, leaning against the post of his bed, and I followed her. And presently I went to bed, and found it difficult to sleep—as soon as I had blown out my candle, I saw that awful sight again; the black gibbet-post, the rat of a man tied to it by his throat, his protruding tongue, his bulging eyes. I did sleep at last, and then I dreamt—horrible things. Dead men—Uncle Joseph—Veller—boats slipping away into darkness—lanterns dancing in yellow fog—all sorts of perplexing and terrifying matters. And at last somebody was shaking my shoulder, and I started up, and there was Keziah at my bedside, and the sun streaming in at the windows.
“Nine o’clock, Ben, and time you’d your breakfast,” she said. “I let you sleep—I’ve been in twice before. And, Ben, he’s gone!”
I sat up in bed—no doubt with my mouth as wide open as my eyes.
“Uncle Joseph?” I exclaimed. “Left?”
“Gone when I got up, at six o’clock,” answered Keziah. “Bag and all! He’s as soft-footed as a cat, when he likes—always was, as I remember him, and that’s another bad sign in man or woman. Never you trust anybody, Ben, that walks about as if they wore velvet-soled slippers! Yes!—he was gone, and our back door left open.”
“He must have known of that five-forty train to Kingshaven,” I said musingly. “You aren’t sorry, Keziah?”
“I’d as soon have the Devil in my house as Joseph Krevin!” she answered. “That’s a fact, Ben! No, I’m glad to be rid of him. But there’ll be trouble. Of course it’s known that he’s been here—and now, in view of that murder, and his going off, secret, like this, things will be said, and we shall have the police nosing round. Well, I shall keep nothing back! But get up, Ben—I’ve a nice piece of fish for your breakfast.”
I got up, not so much because of the fish, though my appetite as a convalescent was keen enough, as from a desire to look out on the scene of last night’s horrors. I drew up my blind and opening the casements of the window leaned out and looked across the beach towards Gallowstree Point. It was a wonderfully beautiful morning, with a blue and cloudless sky, and floods of bright sunshine covering sea and land; the thrushes were singing gaily in our garden, and I could hear the larks in the corn-fields behind; I heard, too, the gentle lapping of the waves on the edge of the sands. And there, in the midst of all this Springtide freshness, stood the black gibbet, on its platform of black rock, and once more, with a shudder, I saw the man tied to it, as clearly as I had seen him in the light of Veller’s lantern. …
Veller himself came in while I was eating my breakfast. After his usual custom, he told us nothing until Keziah began to question him. And both he and Keziah had discussed the weather, and the state of their gardens, before they came to what they were both really thinking about.
“Any more news about last night?” asked Keziah at last.
Veller, sitting by the fire, with his large hands folded across the broadest part of his tunic, twiddled his thumbs and smiled widely. “Well, scarcely what you might term news,” he answered. “We don’t know who the man is, nor where he comes from, nor what he was doing here. Seems like he was brought ashore. But nobody as I can come across see or hear of any vessel a-standing in to this part o’ the coast last evening. Mysterious affair!—uncommon. He had plenty o’ money on him, that man. Gold and silver money—matter o’ fifteen pound, all told. However, looking around that there old gibbet early this morning, one thing I did find as may be important.”
“What?” asked Keziah.
“Have it on me,” replied Veller. He unbuttoned one of the flap pockets of his tunic and produced a little parcel, done up in soft paper. “Have to be shown at the coroner’s ’quest, this will,” he continued. “You see what ’tis?—an old pocket-book. Been a good article once, but now worn. Two or three pockets in it—morrocy leather, I believe. But—empty!”
“No papers in it?” suggested Keziah.
“Not a single dockyment, ma’am! I found it,” he went on, putting his find carefully away, “at the foot of them rocks, beneath where we found him. Lying open, on the sand, as if somebody had thrown it away. Well!—maybe something’ll come o’ that. No telling!” Then, getting at last to what he had really come for, he asked quietly if Mr. Joseph Krevin had yet risen.
“Yes, and gone away, too!” answered Keziah. “He left early this morning.”
“Ah!” said Veller, rubbing his chin. “I hear he was a-visiting you, and was out and about a bit yesterday, and I wondered if he’d seen this here dead man in his pilgrimages?”
“No, he hadn’t, and knew nothing about him!” snapped Keziah. “We woke him out of his sleep last night to ask him that very question.”
“Ah!” repeated Veller. “Just so—exactly. That ’ud be Mr. Joseph’s little bag, no doubt, that Master Ben there drew my official notice to in the porch yesterday morning?”
“It was his bag,” said I.
“To be sure!” assented Veller. “Deposited there midnight, I think, Master Ben? Just so! And where might Mr. Joseph ha’ been between midnight and breakfast time?”
“Ben doesn’t know, Veller, and I don’t know!” said Keziah. “Nobody knows—here, anyway. Ask Joseph Krevin!”
Veller smiled more widely than ever and rolled his eyes from one to the other of us, as if all this was a highly amusing game.
“Aye, just so, to be sure, ma’am!” he said. “And where might Mr. Joseph abide when he’s to home, like?”
“We don’t know that either,” snapped Keziah. “We know nothing whatever about him, except that after nineteen years’ absence he came here yesterday morning about eight, left this morning before five, and went out twice yesterday on business that he never mentioned to us. And when you’ve written all that down, Veller, as you no doubt will, you’ve got every scrap of evidence we can give you!”
“To be sure, ma’am!” said Veller, good-humouredly. “Well, ’tis a ’nation queer business, ain’t it? Don’t remember that I ever heard of a queerer.” Then, rapidly turning to a more congenial subject, he added, “If so be as you’re wanting a setting of eggs for that there old brown hen of yours, Miss Heckitt, my missus she have some rare good ’uns.”
“Well, tell her to send them round,” answered Keziah. “I can do with them.” And as Veller, picking up his peaked cap, was moving off she stopped him with a question. “I suppose some of your lot will be coming down to Middlebourne about this?” she suggested. “Police from Kingshaven, eh?”
“Half-a-dozen in the village now, ma’am,” replied Veller, cheerfully. “And newspaper fellers, too! And I hear the Chief saying something about getting down a Scotland Yard detective, too, as I come out.”
“Well, I don’t want any more policemen here!” declared Keziah. “I don’t mind answering you, as a neighbour, Veller, but I want no more—I’ve told all we know. And as for those newspaper men, if any of ’em come here, I shall shut the door on ’em!—I’ve no opinion of newspapers!—a lot o’ trash!”
Veller promised to do what he could to keep us from molestation, and went away. I thought hard when he had gone and while I was finishing my breakfast. Having been destined, at my own wish, for the legal profession ever since I was twelve years of age, and sent by Keziah to Kingshaven Grammar School with that aim in view, I knew rather more than my sister did about the things we had just discussed, and I foresaw trouble and annoyance—over Uncle Joseph Krevin.
“Keziah!” I said. “I’m afraid it’s not much good asking Veller to keep people away. People will come who won’t be kept away!”
“An Englishman’s house is his castle!” affirmed Keziah, stoutly.
“Not when the law wants to get in,” said I. “I’m afraid the law will want to know a good deal about Uncle Joseph. Uncle Joseph, Keziah came here under highly suspicious circumstances. His movements while he was here were highly suspicious. The circumstances under which he left were highly suspicious. Honest and innocent men, Keziah, don’t leave their relations’ houses at five o’clock in the morning, without as much as a hasty farewell, nor”
“As if I didn’t know all that as well as you do, my lad!” broke in Keziah. “Don’t you start haranguing me!—you’re not a judge yet, nor a lawyer neither. And I don’t want to hear another word about Joseph Krevin! This is my day for cleaning out the best parlour, and I don’t allow anybody or anything to come between me and my work. You put on your overcoat, and go for a bit of a walk in this nice sunshine—it’ll do you good.”
I took Keziah’s advice, and after a while, when the morning had grown still warmer, went upstairs to get my best overcoat, preparatory to setting out for a stroll on the shore. The overcoat was kept in a wardrobe in the room in which Uncle Joseph Krevin had slept: I had to go in there to get it. And as I passed across the floor I chanced to see lying on the carpet near a chair at the side of the bed, on which chair, no doubt, Uncle Joseph had cast some of his clothing when he unrobed, a couple of small squares of paper, or of cardboard, half-hidden by the dimity valancing of the bedstead. I picked them up and found them to be cards, common things, cheaply printed. Each bore the same name and address—a surname, without prefix of Christian name or initial—Crippe, Marine Store Dealer, Old Gravel Lane, E.
I carried them downstairs and showed them to Keziah, who looked at them with a suspicious eye.
“That’ll be a London address, Ben,” she remarked. “Where all the wickedness comes from! But who Crippe may be, or why he was carrying Crippe’s business tickets in his pocket goodness—or, as one should say, the devil!—only knows. Put ’em in the tea-caddy, my lad—they may come in for something, some time.”
The tea-caddy, an ornamental affair, used as a receptacle for odds and ends, stood on the parlour sideboard. I put the cards in one of its compartments and then went out, leaving Keziah to her cleaning. That was only my second time of going abroad since my illness, and though I had a stout stick to aid my steps, I felt that I should not get very far, fine though the morning was and bracing as the light breezes, blown in from the sea, seemed to me. Still, I managed to wander round the semicircle of the beach until I got to near the wall of Middlebourne Grange. There I gave out, and was glad to sit down on a low balustrade that projected from the little bridge which crossed the moat. And I had scarcely perched myself on it when the door in the wall behind me opened and there came out a woman whom, though I had never seen her before, I immediately took to be the recently-arrived tenant of the Grange, Miss Ellingham. She caught sight of me, sitting there, and came forward, looking intently at me—and I, on my part, looked just as intently at her. There was reason—I had never seen anybody like her. She was a thinnish, spare woman, rather above medium height, and, I should say, somewhat older than Keziah, which would make her about forty or forty-five. But it was her face and her dress which attracted me—the dress was a plain black affair, prim and straight, with nothing to relieve its plainness but a white collar and cuffs; the face, sharp, angular, every feature clear cut, was bleached almost as white as the linen, and in it, deep-set, were a pair of the blackest eyes I ever saw in man or woman. They seemed to burn you, those eyes, and if they fixed themselves on you once it was as if they were never to be taken off again.
Those eyes were on me now, and as their owner drew nearer, I felt as if I was being bewitched, or fascinated, or—something. But she spoke, and her voice was extraordinarily soft, gentle, soothing.
“I think you’re Ben Heckitt?” she said, her thin, straight lips curving into a smile that was as pleasing as her voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” said I.
“And you’re about again after your illness?” she went on. “But”—here she nodded knowingly at me, “not feeling over strong, eh?”
“I don’t feel very fit,” I answered. “This is about as far as I can walk, I think.”
“Weak about your legs, eh?” she suggested, with another smile. “And only too glad to sit down?—you see I know how you’re feeling. But I don’t think you ought to sit on that stone—you may get a chill. Come in with me, and I’ll find you something more comfortable to rest on.”
I suppose I did not realise it at the time, but this was one of those women whose orders you’ve just got to obey: I obeyed her, anyway, and rising, followed her through the door in the wall and into the grounds of the Grange. Oddly enough, though I had lived close by it all my life, I had never been in there before, and I was interested to see what a fine, romantic old place it was—an ancient, gabled old mansion set amidst fine trees and carefully-tended gardens. But I had little time to observe this—Miss Ellingham marched me across a lawn, into the house, and through a stone-walled entrance hall to a big room that looked south. She pointed to an easy chair, and then rang a bell at the side of the fireplace.
“I’m going to give you some medicine, Ben,” she said, with another of her smiles. “A glass of good old port and a biscuit. Do you like port?—most boys do.”
Before I could reply the door opened again, and there came into the room, gorgeous in his brilliant Eastern dress, a Hindu manservant.