VI
VOLUNTARY SERVICE
"And why do you think he can't have done it?"
Cazalet had trundled the old canoe over the rollers, and Blanche washardly paddling in the glassy strip alongside the weir. Big dropsclustered on her idle blades, and made tiny circles as they metthemselves in the shining mirror. But below the lock there had beensomething to do, and Blanche had done it deftly and silently, withalmost equal capacity and grace. It had given her a charming flush andsparkle; and, what with the sun's bare hand on her yellow hair, she nowlooked even bonnier than indoors, yet not quite, quite such a girl. Butthen every bit of the boy had gone out of Cazalet. So that hour stolenfrom the past was up forever.
"Why do the police think the other thing?" he retorted. "What have theygot to go on? That's what I want to know. I agree with Toye in onething." Blanche looked up quickly. "I wouldn't trust old Savage an inch.I've been thinking about him and his precious evidence. Do you realizethat it's quite dark now soon after seven? It was pretty thick sayinghis man was bareheaded, with neither hat nor cap left behind to proveit! Yet now it seems he's put a beard to him, and next we shall have thecolor of his eyes!"
Blanche laughed at his vigor of phrase; this was more like the old,hot-tempered, sometimes rather overbearing Sweep. Something had made himjump to the conclusion that Scruton could not possibly have killed Mr.Craven, whatever else he might have done in days gone by. So it simply_was_ impossible, and anybody who took the other side, or had a word tosay for the police, as a force not unknown to look before it leaped,would have to reckon henceforth with Sweep Cazalet.
Mr. Toye already had reckoned with him, in a little debate begun outsidethe old summer schoolroom at Littleford, and adjourned rather thanfinished at the iron gate into the road. In her heart of hearts Blanchecould not say that Cazalet had the best of the argument, except, indeed,in the matter of heated emphasis and scornful asseveration. It wasdifficult, however, to know what line he really took; for while hescouted the very notion of uncorroborated identification by old Savage,he discredited with equal warmth all Toye's contentions on behalf ofcircumstantial evidence. Toye had advanced a general principle withcalm ability, but Cazalet could not be shifted from the particularposition he was so eager to defend, and would only enter into abstractquestions to beg them out of hand.
Blanche rather thought that neither quite understood what the othermeant; but she could not blink the fact that the old friend had neitherthe dialectical mind nor the unfailing courtesy of the new. That beingso, with her perception she might have changed the subject; but shecould see that Cazalet was thinking of nothing else; and no wonder,since they were approaching the scene of the tragedy and his own oldhome, with each long dip of her paddle.
It had been his own wish to start upstream; but she could see thewistful pain in his eyes as they fell once more upon the red turretsand the smooth green lawn of Uplands; and she neither spoke nor lookedat him again until he spoke to her.
"I see they've got the blinds down still," he said detachedly. "What'shappened to Mrs. Craven?"
"I hear she went into a nursing home before the funeral."
"Then there's nobody there?"
"It doesn't look as if there was, does it?" said poor Blanche.
"I expect we should find Savage somewhere. Would you very much mind,Blanche? I should rather like--if it was just setting foot--with you--"
But even that effective final pronoun failed to bring any buoyancy backinto his voice; for it was not in the least effective as he said it, andhe no longer looked her in the face. But this all seemed natural toBlanche, in the manifold and overlapping circumstances of the case. Shemade for the inlet at the upper end of the lawn. And her promptunquestioning acquiescence shamed Cazalet into further and frankerexplanation, before he could let her land to please him.
"You don't know how I feel this!" he exclaimed quite miserably. "I meanabout poor old Scruton; he's gone through so much as it is, whatever hemay have done to deserve it long ago. And he wasn't the only one, or theworst; some day I'll tell you how I know, but you may take it from methat's so. The real villain's gone to his account. I won't pretend I'msorry for him. _De mortuis_ doesn't apply if you've got to invent the_bonum_! But Scruton--after ten years--only think of it! Is itconceivable that he should go and do a thing like this the very momenthe gets out? I ask you, is it even conceivable?"
He asked her with something of the ferocity with which he had turned onToye for suggesting that the police might have something up theirsleeves, and be given a chance. But Blanche understood him. And now sheshowed herself golden to the core, almost as an earnest of her fitnessfor the fires before her.
"Poor fellow," she cried, "he has a friend in you, at any rate! And I'llhelp you to help him, if there's any way I can?"
He clutched her hand, but only as he might have clutched a man's.
"You can't do anything; but I won't forget that," he almost choked. "Imeant to stand by him in a very different way. He'd been down to thedepths, and I'd come up a bit; then he was good to me as a lad, and itwas my father's partner who was the ruin of him. I seemed to owe himsomething, and now--now I'll stand by him whatever happens and--whatever_has_ happened!"
Then they landed in the old, old inlet. Cazalet knew every knot in thepost to which he tied Blanche's canoe.
It was a very different place, this Uplands, from poor old Littleford onthe lower reach. The grounds were five or six acres instead of aboutone, and a house in quite another class stood farther back from theriver and very much farther from the road.
The inlet began the western boundary, which continued past theboat-house in the shape of a high hedge, a herbaceous border (not whatit had been in the old days), and a gravel path. This path was screenedfrom the lawn by a bank of rhododendrons, as of course were the backyard and kitchen premises, past which it led into the front garden,eventually debouching into the drive. It was the path along whichCazalet led the way this afternoon, and Blanche at his heels was sostruck by something that she could not help telling him he knew his wayvery well.
"Every inch of it!" he said bitterly. "But so I ought, if anybody does."
"But these rhododendrons weren't here in your time. They're the oneimprovement. Don't you remember how the path ran round to the other endof the yard? This gate into it wasn't made."
"No more it was," said Cazalet, as they came up to the new gate on theright. It was open, and looking through they could see where the oldgateway had been bricked. The rhododendrons topped the yard wall atthat point, masking it from the lawn, and making on the whole animprovement of which anybody but a former son of the house might havetaken more account.
He said he could see no other change. He pretended to recognize the veryblinds that were down and flapping in the kitchen windows facing west.But for the fact that these windows were wide open, the whole placeseemed as deserted as Littleford; but just past the windows, and flushwith them, was the tradesmen's door, and the two trespassers were barelyabreast of it when this door opened and disgorged a man.
The man was at first sight a most incongruous figure for the backpremises of any house, especially in the country. He was tall, ratherstout, very powerfully built and rather handsome in his way; histop-hat shone like his patent-leather boots, and his gray cutaway suithung well in front and was duly creased as to the trousers; yet not forone moment was this personage in the picture, in the sense in whichHilton Toye had stepped into the Littleford picture.
"May I ask what you're doing here?" he demanded bluntly of the maleintruder.
"No harm, I hope," replied Cazalet, smiling, much to his companion'srelief. She had done him an injustice, however, in dreading an explosionwhen they were both obviously in the wrong, and she greatly admired thetone he took so readily. "I know we've no business here whatever; but ithappens to be my old home, and I only landed from Australia last night.I'm on the river for the first time, and simply had to have a lookround."
The other big man had looked far fro
m propitiated by the earlier ofthese remarks, but the closing sentences had worked a change.
"Are you young Mr. Cazalet?" he cried.
"I am, or rather I was," laughed Cazalet, still on his mettle.
"You've read all about the case then, I don't mind betting!" exclaimedthe other with a jerk of his topper toward the house behind him.
"I've read all I found in the papers last night and this morning, andsuch arrears as I've been able to lay my hands on," said Cazalet. "But,as I tell you, my ship only got in from Australia last night, and I cameround all the way in her. There was nothing in the English papers whenwe touched at Genoa."
"I see, I see." The man was still looking him up and down. "Well, Mr.Cazalet, my name's Drinkwater, and I'm from Scotland Yard. I happen tobe in charge of the case."
"I guessed as much," said Cazalet, and this surprised Blanche more thananything else from him. Yet nothing about him was any longer like theSweep of other days, or of any previous part of that very afternoon. Andthis was also easy to understand on reflection; for if he meant to standby the hapless Scruton, guilty or not guilty, he could not perhaps beginbetter than by getting on good terms with the police. But his readytact, and in that case cunning, were certainly a revelation to one whohad known him marvelously as boy and youth.
"I mustn't ask questions," he continued, "but I see you're stillsearching for things, Mr. Drinkwater."
"Still minding our own job," said Mr. Drinkwater genially. They hadsauntered on with him to the corner of the house, and seen a bowler hatbobbing in the shrubbery down the drive. Cazalet laughed like a man.
"Well, I needn't tell you I know every inch of the old place," he said;"that is, barring alterations," as Blanche caught his eye. "But I expectthis search is harrowed, rather?"
"Rather," said Mr. Drinkwater, standing still in the drive. He had alsotaken out a presentation gold half-hunter, suitably inscribed in memoryof one of his more bloodless victories. But Cazalet could always beobtuse, and now he refused to look an inch lower than thedetective-inspector's bright brown eyes.
"There's just one place that's occurred to me, Mr. Drinkwater, thatperhaps may not have occurred to you."
"Where's that, Mr. Cazalet?"
"In the room where--the room itself."
Mr. Drinkwater's long stare ended in an indulgent smile. "You can showme if you like," said he indifferently. "But I suppose you know we'vegot the man?"