A WALK IN THE GARDEN
"Here you are, Emmy. These are the gentlemen you are expecting,"
announced Carstairs, cheerily.
Miss Costivan--who was about four-and-twenty--said she was pleased to
meet them, and then turned to call through an open door, "Mother, the
London gentlemen have come. Luke's just fetched 'em."
Immediately the sound of someone making vigorous use of a washboard,
which all along had been issuing from the door, came to an abrupt end; a
pair of clogs clattered noisily across a tiled floor, and there issued
from the scullery a tall, gaunt, black-haired, somewhat slatternly
female whose cast of features was so strongly suggestive of the Romany
race that one might well have suspected her of having more than a mere
dash of gypsy blood in her veins.
She advanced into the room, drying her hands on her apron, and welcomed
the newcomers heartily. Cleek decided that never in his life had he seen
a mother and daughter who bore so little resemblance to each other.
"I'll have the kettle on and some tea ready in a very few minutes,
gentlemen," declared Mrs. Costivan, with an odd use of certain words
which was not lost upon Cleek. "But maylike you'd be glad to run up to
your room and wash a bit, the whiles the kittle's boilin'? Luke, lad,
show the way, there's a bonny. Old Man's not home from the fields yet.
They've a power o' hay to get under cover over at Mason's before the
weather breaks." By which it was clear to Cleek that the good lady
wished her visitors to understand that her husband was a field hand on
one of the outlying farms.
Carstairs announced his readiness to perform the suggested office, and
called on the two "London gentlemen" to follow him--an act which pulled
Cleek up with a jerk, for he had fallen into a state of abstraction born
of a sudden realization of the peculiar character of the wet marks Mrs.
Costivan had left upon her apron when she dried her hands.
He had never heard of anybody washing things in mustard water--things
which required hard rubbing on a laundry board. Yet, if the yellow stain
left by drying her hands on her apron suggested anything, it certainly
suggested that.
Here, catching the sound of Carstairs' voice, Cleek turned, and together
with Mr. Narkom, followed him up the stairs to an airy, double-bedded
room overlooking the garden in the rear.
Here Carstairs, after looking to see that there were towels on the rack
and soap in the dish, left them and went below. Presently they could
hear his voice and Emmy Costivan's blent in half-subdued laughter.
Cleek, leaving the door partly open and signalling to Narkom to place
himself so that he could see if anybody started to come upstairs, went
to the open window, looked out across the neglected garden to the belt
of woodland beyond it and, putting up his hand, tilted his hat to one
side and began reflectively to scratch his head. Immediately, a bare
branch moved above the level of a thick clump of wild elder bushes just
by the broken paling which marked the rear boundary of the garden. It
remained stationary for an instant, and then dropped out of sight again.
"All right, Narkom, they are there!" he said in a swift whisper. "Sit
tight a minute and don't speak."
Then he slopped a quantity of water out of the jug into the wash-basin,
plunged his hands into it, then rubbed them along the window-sill. After
which he partially rinsed them and then dried them off on first one
towel and then the other--all the while moving up and down the floor and
whistling contentedly.
"All right," he announced, presently. "Needn't do sentry duty any more.
Leave the door wide open. I don't think our friend Carstairs will be
quite such an idiot as to waste his time in sneaking up; but if he
should the open door will be enough for him and, at the same time, give
us a chance to see him. A bad egg, that gentleman. He is pretty deeply
involved in this little business unless I miss my guess."
"I thought you suspected him of something when you crossed over to that
wild rose bush."
"What! Am I dropping into the habit of giving signs, then?" exclaimed
Cleek. "I wonder if our friend the vicar noticed, too? I caught his eye
fixed upon me more than once."
"The vicar! Good heavens, man, you don't mean that you suspect----?"
"Ch't! Not so loud, or I shall wish I had made you a dumb man as well as
a deaf one. Sh-h! Nothing now--your time is coming. We have dawdled to
the end of the dawdling period, and come to the active one. You shall
have speech and excitement enough the minute the darkness falls."
"You have an idea, then?" murmured Mr. Narkom. "You have really picked
up a clue?"
"I have picked up many. They may be good and they may be bad, I can
decide only when St. Saviour's bells start ringing to-night."
"You have a clue to that, then?"
"Not I. They will be the last on my list for investigation. At present I
am principally concerned with the astonishing circumstance regarding the
noise of that fellow Davis's death struggle."
"But, man alive, he didn't make any."
"Precisely. That's the astonishing circumstance to which I allude!"
said Cleek. The queer one-sided smile travelled slowly up his cheek.
Midway down the neglected garden Mrs. Costivan was engaged in the task
of hanging up a pair of wet gray overalls, and along the path beside her
a stream of yellowish water from a recently emptied washtub was
trickling down the drain.
"Mr. Narkom!"
"Yes."
"Essex is your native county, I believe, so naturally you ought to be an
authority on it. Tell me something. Is it a peculiarity of Essex hay,
then, to give off a deep yellowish stain?"
"Hay? Hay _stain_? What confounded nonsense!"
"Precisely. That's how I feel about it myself. And as between Mrs.
Hurdon and Mrs. Costivan----Come along, let's get down and eat. I hope
the fair Emmy will give us something good. I'm famished."
The "fair Emmy" did, presiding over the tea-pot herself, and laying out
such a tempting spread that even Carstairs was prevailed upon to join
with the others and to defer his departure for another half-hour or so.
But finally he had to go, and Emmy, excusing herself, rose to see him as
far as the door. And it was only then, as she looked round over her
shoulder at leaving, and a flash of alertness came into her eyes, that
Cleek was able to put his finger on a point which heretofore had baffled
him. He had wondered from the first whose eyes hers reminded him of;
now, when he saw them with that expression in them and accompanied by a
certain twitching movement of the head, he knew!
Carstairs went his way, and Emmy returned to set about making matters as
pleasant for the visitors as she knew how. Then, after a time, Emmy's
father having come home and had his meal in the kitchen, and gone
"straightaway up to bed, poor lad! the sun havin' give him a splittin'
headache." Mrs. Costivan, too, came in while Emmy went out to wash up
the dishes. It soon became very apparent to the two "London gentlemen"
that they were not going to be allowed to get out of the sight of one or
other of the occupants of this house for so much as one minute if the
thing could be avoided.
Meantime, night was drawing in and Cleek, borrowing a sheet of paper and
an envelope, sat down to "drop a line to my missus before I turn in."
Mr. Narkom, taking his cue from this, slipped down in his chair and
began to snore softly.
Cleek wrote on until darkness fell and the moon rose and all the
tree-tops beyond the garden were picked out in silver; then sealed the
letter in its envelope and put it into his pocket. He rose then,
stretching and yawning, from his chair. Mr. Narkom, hearing him, opened
a pair of blinking eyes and looked up.
"Bedtime?" he inquired, sleepily.
"'Most," said Cleek. "Feel like having a pipe and a toddle up and down
the garden before turning in? Come along then, old sport. Mind our going
through the kitchen, missus?"
Mrs. Costivan did not; but for fear they should not quite know the way,
piloted them, and as they stepped out into the shadowy darkness and
lighted up they were conscious of the fact that, as soon as she put out
the kitchen light, she sat down beside the window and kept watch of
them.
The flare of the lighted match had done more than merely supply fire for
their pipes. They knew that it would; but they were in no haste. Time
must be given and--they gave it. Three times they made the journey up
and down the garden's length, smoking and chatting away now and again,
before Cleek, coming abreast of the broken palings and the clump of
elder bushes, ventured to say in a whisper, "Next time down be ready to
grab the pipes!" and they faced round and strolled back toward the
cottage again.
It was the fourth time down the garden that the thing was done. Suddenly
both men gave a jump, Cleek shouting excitedly, "A hare, by Jove! Grab
it!" Then both plunged into the elder bushes. A voice said, "Missed it!
Lord, didn't the beggar bolt?" Then Hammond took Narkom's place and
Petrie took Cleek's, and Mrs. Costivan, who had just started to run down
to the spot where she had seen them dive out of sight, suddenly saw
that they had come back laughing and twitting each other over their
failure to catch the hare, and were again walking up and down the garden
and smoking. And the good lady slipped back into the darkness again. And
so it fell out that when the pipes were finished and the smokers tired
enough to go to bed, it was Petrie and Hammond who slept that night
under the thatch of the Costivan cottage.