“Hullo,” said Timothy. “A row? I thought you didn’t mean to have any.”
“It wasn’t Nancy’s fault,” said Peggy. “The G.A. simply asked for it.”
“It wasn’t really a row,” said Nancy. “It was like this. She’d said, just out of the blue, while we were sleuthing round, that we had improved a lot, and we were a bit bucked because that was just what we’ve been working to make her think. What’s the good of being angels for days on end all for nothing? But then she asked what was the name of those children who were camping near the low end of the lake last time she was here in the summer, and of course I had to tell her it was the Walkers, and she said she thought they must have had a very bad influence on us and that it was a good thing they weren’t here … Well, I ask you? Who wouldn’t blow up? Think of Susan, or John, or Titty, or even Roger being a bad influence on anybody! And of course when I blew up and said they were our friends she blew up too, and said they were always making us late for meals and that sort of rubbish, and that she’d told Mother we’d be better without them. ‘And so you are,’ she said with a would-be loving leer. And I said that Mother likes them too, and that anybody who knew them would say the same. Well, she calmed down and there was no more about them for a bit. And then last night, after she’d been having another look at what’s left of Dot’s hoofmarks under that tree (we’ve done a bit of careless trampling) she started again. All of a sudden she said, ‘I suppose those Walker children are not staying in the neighbourhood now?’ And I said, ‘I wish they were but they aren’t coming for another week.’ And later on, when we were having supper, she had another go. She said, ‘You are quite sure those children have not come yet?’ and looked gimletty at me, and I said, ‘Not for another week, Aunt Maria.’ And she said ‘Ah!’”
“You mean she didn’t believe you?” Dorothea was indignant.
“She didn’t say she didn’t but it sounded like it,” said Peggy.
“She wouldn’t dare,” said Nancy. “But you know how natives are when they get an idea in their heads. And she’s got two now, and there’s a sort of civil war going on inside her. You see, she rubbed it hard into Sammy about the suspicious character and she’d about persuaded herself that she’d actually seen him in the moonlight. And now she’s got this other idea about the Swallows. All the better. The more she tries to get Timothy in jail and the more she worries about the Swallows, the less likely she is to find out about our Picts.”
“Those Walker children are safely out of the way,” said Timothy, “and I’m not. Another thing is, if she starts making inquiries about children somebody may put her on the track of the right ones.”
“There isn’t a traitor in the place,” said Nancy. “And it’s all right anyway. Her train goes at two o’clock tomorrow. She’s packing this morning. And after all yesterday’s sleuthing, she’s sure to lie down in the afternoon. She isn’t going to have time to ask anybody anything.”
“I say,” said Dick, “if she was at the window she must have seen you come across the lawn in those clothes.”
“She told us we might. She was agreeing to everything we asked. I told her Mother always lets us wear comfortables on holiday, and she said, ‘I don’t like to see you in them. Most unsuitable,’ and I said she wouldn’t be seeing us in them once we were out, and she said, ‘All right. Wear whatever you like.’ And then, at the very last minute, she was back at the Swallows again. She said, ‘You are quite sure you will not be seeing those Walker children?’ and I said, ‘But I told you they won’t be here for another week.’ And that was that. She didn’t even ask where we were going.”
“What would you have said if she had?” asked Timothy.
“We’d have told her we were sailing down the lake to Uncle Jim’s houseboat. And so we were.”
“Glad I was in time to stop you,” said Timothy.
“Hey,” said Nancy. “What would have happened if you’d missed us?”
“I left a note on the cabin door,” said Timothy, “and I’d have got back from the mine in the afternoon.”
“Giminy,” said Nancy. “Natives have no consciences at all. You’d invited us … At least you’d said we could come.”
“He couldn’t help it,” said Dick, “if he had to go to the mine.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Timothy. “Work first. What about getting going?” He hove his enormous knapsack off the ground.
“What have you got in that?” asked Nancy.
“Rations for the party.”
“You can’t carry the lot,” said Nancy. “There’s nothing in our knapsacks except a few sandwiches.”
“We’ve got knapsacks, too,” said Dorothea.
“Everybody carries her own grub or his,” said Nancy. “And if it gets too heavy they’ve got to eat it and have nothing to carry at all. Go on. Empty it out and let’s see what there is.”
“We’ll never eat all that,” said Dorothea.
“Of course we will,” said Nancy.
“None too much, I expect,” said Timothy. “But I’ll tell you what I haven’t got and that’s matches. I’ve run right out. I’d meant to have gone to the village on the way here, but I was afraid you might have started.”
Dorothea went to her store and gave him a full box.
Timothy took a pipe from his pocket. It was already filled with tobacco. He lit it and puffed at it, while the provisions were being divided among the different knapsacks. “First pipe since yesterday,” he said. “I used the last match getting the Primus going for supper.”
“Come on,” said Nancy. “Mining expedition. Trek to the goldfields. As good as last year. Except that the Swallows aren’t here, and Timothy’s a partner instead of a hated rival.”
They set out, going up to the top of the wood, and along the fell, to cross the valley of the Amazon higher up and climb into the mining country.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE GREAT AUNT GOES TO SEE FOR HERSELF
COOK was leaning back in her chair, having a sit-down, with her hands crossed and her head already nodding, when the drawing-room bell rang. She hardly heard it. She had had a difficult morning helping Miss Turner to pack and keeping her temper as well as she could. Nancy and Peggy were out and away with their packets of sandwiches. She had given Miss Turner her lunch and had a bite herself in the kitchen, and now, with the house at peace and Miss Turner gone to her bedroom, she thought a body had a right to take things easy. The bell rang again. Cook started up. It rang yet again, and she hurried out to find Miss Turner, dressed for walking, standing at the drawing-room door.
“I shall want the car,” said Miss Turner.
“But,” stammered Cook, “you aren’t thinking of driving it, Miss? There’s only Billy Lewthwaite can do that with the Missis and Mr Turner away.”
“You will please to fetch him at once,” said Miss Turner, and Cook went out to find Bill Lewthwaite, who was digging in the potato patch behind his mother’s cottage. His mother, Mrs Lewthwaite, Mrs Blackett’s old nurse, had heard all about the burglary from Sammy, her elder son, the policeman, and was glad to have a crack about it with Cook. She had been told some of the things Miss Turner had said about the police, and, as a policeman’s mother, she had a good deal to say herself, about Miss Turner. But Billy, her son, was glad to have a chance of driving old Rattletrap as a change from digging potatoes. He put on his coat, took the old yachting cap that he liked to wear when he was being a chauffeur, and hurried off to Beckfoot. By the time Cook came back he had got Rattletrap going, and Cook met him, driving out of the Beckfoot gateway, changing gears only a little less noisily than Mrs Blackett. Sitting very straight in the back of the car was Miss Turner.
“Wouldn’t look at me,” said Cook to herself. “Thinks I should have come back on the run, likely. What’s she doing, driving that way along?” Puzzled, she stood and watched the car, with its wobbly back wheel, sway round the corner. She listened to it rattling and clattering up the little rise, down the other side and away on
the road to the foot of the lake. She went back to her kitchen, settled down and had slipped off again into the pleasant afternoon nap that Miss Turner had interrupted when she was waked once more, this time by a bang on the door that opened into the kitchen from the yard.
“What’s ado now?” she asked herself. “Can’t folk leave a body alone?”
“Where at’s Mr Turner’s petrol?” panted Bill Lewthwaite, scratching his head with a finger under his yachting cap. “Every can in t’garage is empty.”
“Have you run short?” said Cook. “Where’s the car?”
“Happen a mile down t’road,” said Billy. “She was running right enough, and then the engine started hop and go lucky and then it packed up. I’d all t’plugs out and back before I thought me to look in t’tank.”
“But where’s Miss Turner?”
“Sitting up in t’owd car looking like thunder and waiting whiles I get back. I pushed her to t’side of t’road and left her. But where at’s Mr Turner’s petrol?”
“If them cans is empty you won’t find none nearer than head o’ t’lake.”
Billy looked wildly round. “It ain’t what she says. It’s how she looks,” he muttered.
Cook suddenly laughed. “Sitting up there,” she laughed. “Eh, I’d give summat to see her.” And then, seriously, “You’d best be off, Billy lad.”
“And my bike’s wanting a back wheel,” groaned Billy. “I put my foot through t’spokes Saturday night.”
“You’d best take Miss Nancy’s,” said Cook. “I’ll make it right with her. Don’t you waste a minute, with Miss Turner left at t’side o’ t’road. And me and all of us killing ourselves all these days keeping things easy.”
They went across the yard and Billy took Nancy’s bicycle from the shed under the pigeon loft.
“It would have tyres flat,” he growled, tore the pump from it and pumped them up. Then with a petrol can in one hand, and his knees nearly hitting the handlebars as they came up, he rode desperately off.
*
A butcher’s man was driving home to the town a dozen miles beyond the foot of the lake. His van was almost empty after delivering joints of meat, steaks, saddles, sirloins and what not at houses all through the district. He had only a few more houses at which to call. That evening he was to play as one of a team in an important darts match, and, as he drove, he was seeing the darts-board before him. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself score a double top, a twenty and a sixty with his first three darts. Ah, if he could only do that when the time came. He could almost hear the stamping of applauding feet on the tavern floor. He was smiling to himself as he swung his van round a corner and saw an ancient motor car, with an elderly lady sitting in the back of it, drawn up at the side of the narrow road, giving him hardly room to pass.
He put his foot on the brake and slowed down, saw that he could get through with about an inch to spare, wondered what had become of the driver of the old car, was sorry that he had no chance of telling him what he thought of him for leaving his car in such a place, and was just squeezing through with the brackens at the side of the road brushing the dust from his mudguards, when a closed parasol suddenly waved in front of him. He stopped.
“How far are you going along this road?” the old lady asked him.
No business of hers, of course, but he told her.
“You will pass Swainson’s farm?”
“Aye.”
“I shall be obliged to you if you will convey me so far.”
“That’s all right, Ma’am,” he said. “Just you hop in. Puncture, is it?”
“No,” said the old lady. “Not a puncture.”
She got out of the car, and the butcher’s man saw that hopping in was not going to be easy for her. He moved his van forward a yard or two, hopped out himself, and opened the door on the other side.
“Now, Ma’am,” he said. “You leave your umbrella to me. Just you take hold and I’ll give you a boost behind.”
“I am sorry to trouble you,” said the old lady, did as she was told, and was presently seated in the front of the butcher’s van.
“Fine weather we’re having,” said the butcher’s man, as he got in and put his engine into gear. “For the time of year,” he added.
He wondered what was wrong with her. She sat there saying nothing, and, as he glanced sideways, he saw that her lips were tight together. “Taking trouble to somebody,” he said to himself.
He drove on along the winding road, sometimes close to the side of the lake, sometimes separated from it by a patch of coppice or by fields sloping down to the water, passing a house or a cottage here and there. The old lady did not seem to want to talk. Something on her mind, he thought. He had a try again about rain and visitors coming together in August, but it was no good. So he shrugged his shoulders and drove on in silence. He turned suddenly off the road through a big open gate and up a drive between trees.
“But this is Crag Gill,” said the old lady.
“Aye,” he said. “Leg o’ mutton to leave here.”
“I think I will get down,” said the old lady. “I must ask you to stop.”
“Do you know Miss Thornton of Crag Gill?” he asked.
“I will get down now,” said the old lady.
“It’s nobbut a step to Swainson’s from here,” he said, guessing that his old lady had no wish to be seen driving up to the back door or Crag Gill in the front seat of a butcher’s van. “It’s nobbut a step. But if you don’t feel like walking it, I’ll pick you up again when I’ve left my leg o’ mutton.”
“Thank you,” said the old lady, and he got down and helped her to the ground.
“Thank you,” she said again, and set off, walking back to the gate.
“Rum old girl,” thought the butcher’s man, climbed into his seat and drove up to the house. At the house there was a bit of an argument about the last week’s joint and, in proving to the cook that you couldn’t have meat without bone, he did not mention his passenger. He was rather longer than he had expected, and was glad that the old lady had not been there to hear what the Crag Gill cook had to say about him. But when he left, he hurried, thinking to pick her up again. There might be a tip coming or there might not. At least he could give her a chance. Even if it was only a sixpence, there was no harm in a glass of beer on a hot day.
But his passenger was not waiting for him by the Crag Gill gate. Nor did he find her on the road between the gate and Swainson’s farm. “Quicker on her pins than you’d have thought,” he said to himself. He did not mind. After all, he had not thought of the sixpence when he had taken her up. He drove on, thinking of his imaginary dart-board, left his last parcels in the village at the foot of the lake, and never thought of the old lady again.
*
Mary Swainson, old Mrs Swainson’s granddaughter, had been told by her grandfather that she was looking as pretty as a picture, had been reminded by her grandmother of the messages she was to give to her aunt, had said “Goodbye” to both of them, and had set out from the farm in her best clothes, carrying a wicker basket. Once a year she went to spend a week with her aunt, who had married a farmer down Preston way. The old people were always in a stew lest she should miss her train, so she had set out in plenty of time to row comfortably up the lake to the village on the opposite side, leave her boat with a friendly boatman, and take the bus from the steamer pier up to the railway station. Going that way she had a quick journey with no changes, instead of having to change twice and travel all round the estuary as she would have had to do if she had gone from the railway station at the foot of the lake. She walked through the wood by the cart track, stopping for a moment to make sure that she had her spending money safe in her purse. She thought of her Jack, who always fussed about her going away. Good for him to miss her for a week. Mary Swainson was smiling happily when she came to the road and saw old Miss Turner, Mrs Blackett’s aunt, walking towards her.
Mary Swainson knew her at once. As a child she had been very much in
awe of her. She reminded herself that she was now grown up and was going to marry Jack, the woodman, as soon as she thought fit, while Miss Turner, poor old thing, had never married at all. Crossing the road, to go through the coppice down to her boat, she smiled at Miss Turner with a queer mixture of kindness, pity and fear.
“Mary! Mary Swainson,” said Miss Turner.
“Yes, Miss Turner,” said Mary.
“You have some children staying at the farm, I think?”
“Nay, we’ve no one this year,” said Mary. “What with Grandmother getting old and Grandad not able to get about, we’ve not been taking visitors latterly.”
Miss Turner prodded the ground with her parasol. “Not staying in the house, perhaps, but camping in tents quite near. You know the children I mean. They were for ever making my nieces late for meals when I was staying at Beckfoot the summer before last. Walker, I think their name is.”
“Oh, them,” said Mary. “No. We’ve seen nothing of them this year.”
“My nieces did not come here this morning?”
“No, Miss Turner. If the Walker children are back again, they’ll be on the island most likely. They stay at Holly Howe on the other side. They had trouble with their boat that year. That was how they came camping up on the fell behind our house.”
“On the island?” said Miss Turner, looking towards the lake, which she could not see because of the thick coppice between the road and the water.
“If they’re here, that’s where they’ll be,” said Mary. “And Mrs Blackett’s two’ll likely be with them. They generally what make for the island, unless they’re going to Mr Turner’s houseboat. I could put you across, Miss Turner, if you want to join them. Or I’ll give them a shout as I go by and they’ll bring a boat over to fetch you.”