Buch lesen: «Postern of Fate»

CHAPTER 2
The Black Arrow

Mrs Thomas Beresford replaced The Cuckoo Clock, by Mrs Molesworth, choosing a vacant place on the third shelf from the bottom. The Mrs Molesworths were congregated here together. Tuppence drew out The Tapestry Room and held it thoughtfully in her fingers. Or she might read Four Winds Farm. She couldn’t remember Four Winds Farm as well as she could remember The Cuckoo Clock and The Tapestry Room. Her fingers wandered… Tommy would be back soon.

She was getting on. Yes, surely she was getting on. If only she didn’t stop and pull out old favourites and read them. Very agreeable but it took a lot of time. And when Tommy asked her in the evening when he came home how things were going and she said, ‘Oh very well now,’ she had to employ a great deal of tact and finesse to prevent him from going upstairs and having a real look at how the bookshelves were progressing. It all took a long time. Getting into a house always took a long time, much longer than one thought. And so many irritating people. Electricians, for instance, who came and appeared to be displeased with what they had done the last time they came and took up more large areas in the floor and, with cheerful faces, produced more pitfalls for the unwary housewife to walk along and put a foot wrong and be rescued just in time by the unseen electrician who was groping beneath the floor.

‘Sometimes,’ said Tuppence, ‘I really wish we hadn’t left Bartons Acre.’

‘Remember the dining-room,’ Tommy had said, ‘and remember those attics, and remember what happened to the garage. Nearly wrecked the car, you know it did.’

‘I suppose we could have had it patched up,’ said Tuppence.

‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘we’d have had to practically replace the damaged building, or else we had to move. This is going to be a very nice house some day. I’m quite sure of that. Anyway, there’s going to be room in it for all the things we want to do.’

‘When you say the things we want to do,’ Tuppence had said, ‘you mean the things we want to find places for and to keep.’

‘I know,’ said Tommy. ‘One keeps far too much. I couldn’t agree with you more.’

At that moment Tuppence considered something—whether they ever were going to do anything with this house, that is to say, beyond getting into it. It sounded simple but had turned out complex. Partly, of course, all these books.

‘If I’d been a nice ordinary child of nowadays,’ said Tuppence, ‘I wouldn’t have learned to read so easily when I was young. Children nowadays who are four, or five, or six, don’t seem to be able to read when they get to ten or eleven. I can’t think why it was so easy for all of us. We could all read. Me and Martin next door and Jennifer down the road and Cyril and Winifred. All of us. I don’t mean we could all spell very well but we could read anything we wanted to. I don’t know how we learnt. Asking people, I suppose. Things about posters and Carter’s Little Liver Pills. We used to read all about them in the fields when trains got near London. It was very exciting. I always wondered what they were. Oh dear, I must think of what I’m doing.’

She removed some more books. Three-quarters of an hour passed with her absorbed first in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, then with Charlotte Yonge’s Unknown to History. Her hands lingered over the fat shabbiness of The Daisy Chain.

‘Oh, I must read that again,’ said Tuppence. ‘To think of the years and years and years it is since I did read it. Oh dear, how exciting it was, wondering, you know, whether Norman was going to be allowed to be confirmed or not. And Ethel and—what was the name of the place? Coxwell or something like—and Flora who was worldly. I wonder why everyone was “worldly” in those days, and how poorly it was thought of, being worldly. I wonder what we are now. Do you think we’re all worldly or not?’

‘I beg yer pardon, ma’am?’

‘Oh nothing,’ said Tuppence, looking round at her devoted henchman, Albert, who had just appeared in the doorway.

‘I thought you called for something, madam. And you rang the bell, didn’t you?’

‘Not really,’ said Tuppence. ‘I just leant on it getting up on a chair to take a book out.’

‘Is there anything I can take down for you?’

‘Well, I wish you would,’ said Tuppence. ‘I’m falling off those chairs. Some of their legs are very wobbly, some of them rather slippery.’

‘Any book in particular?’

‘Well, I haven’t got on very far with the third shelf up. Two shelves down from the top, you know. I don’t know what books are there.’

Albert mounted on a chair and banging each book in turn to dislodge such dust as it had managed to gather on it, handed things down. Tuppence received them with a good deal of rapture.

‘Oh, fancy! All these. I really have forgotten a lot of these. Oh, here’s The Amulet and here’s The Psammead. Here’s The New Treasure Seekers. Oh, I love all those. No, don’t put them in shelves yet, Albert. I think I’ll have to read them first. Well, I mean, one or two of them first, perhaps. Now, what’s this one? Let me see. The Red Cockade. Oh yes, that was one of the historical ones. That was very exciting. And there’s Under the Red Robe, too. Lots of Stanley Weyman. Lots and lots. Of course I used to read those when I was about ten or eleven. I shouldn’t be surprised if I don’t come across The Prisoner of Zenda.’ She sighed with enormous pleasure at the remembrance. ‘The Prisoner of Zenda. One’s first introduction, really, to the romantic novel. The romance of Princess Flavia. The King of Ruritania. Rudolph Rassendyll, some name like that, whom one dreamt of at night.’

Albert handed down another selection.

‘Oh yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘That’s better, really. That’s earlier again. I must put the early ones all together. Now, let me see. What have we got here? Treasure Island. Well, that’s nice but of course I have read Treasure Island again, and I’ve seen, I think, two films of it. I don’t like seeing it on films, it never seems right. Oh—and here’s Kidnapped. Yes, I always liked that.’

Albert stretched up, overdid his armful, and Catriona fell more or less on Tuppence’s head.

‘Oh, sorry, madam. Very sorry.’

‘It’s quite all right,’ said Tuppence, ‘it doesn’t matter. Catriona. Yes. Any more Stevensons up there?’

Albert handed the books down now more gingerly. Tuppence uttered a cry of excessive delight.

‘The Black Arrow I declare! The Black Arrow! Now that’s one of the first books really I ever got hold of and read. Yes. I don’t suppose you ever did, Albert. I mean, you wouldn’t have been born, would you? Now let me think. Let me think. The Black Arrow. Yes, of course, it was that picture on the wall with eyes—real eyes—looking through the eyes of the picture. It was splendid. So frightening, just that. Oh yes. The Black Arrow. What was it? It was all about—oh yes, the cat, the dog? No. The cat, the rat, and Lovell, the dog, Rule all England under the hog. That’s it. The hog was Richard the Third, of course. Though nowadays they all write books saying he was really wonderful. Not a villain at all. But I don’t believe that. Shakespeare didn’t either. After all, he started his play by making Richard say: “I am determined so to prove a villain.” Ah yes. The Black Arrow.’

‘Some more, madam?’

‘No, thank you, Albert. I think I’m rather too tired to go on now.’

‘That’s all right. By the way, the master rang and said he’d be half an hour late.’

‘Never mind,’ said Tuppence.

She sat down in the chair, took The Black Arrow, opened the pages and engrossed herself.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘how wonderful this is. I’ve really forgotten it quite enough to enjoy reading it all over again. It was so exciting.’

Silence fell. Albert returned to the kitchen. Tuppence leaned back in the chair. Time passed. Curled up in the rather shabby armchair, Mrs Thomas Beresford sought the joys of the past by applying herself to the perusal of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Black Arrow.

In the kitchen time also passed. Albert applied himself to the various manoeuvres with the stove. A car drove up. Albert went to the side door.

‘Shall I put it in the garage, sir?’

‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘I’ll do that. I expect you’re busy with dinner. Am I very late?’

‘Not really, sir, just about when you said. A little early, in fact.’

‘Oh.’ Tommy disposed of the car and then came into the kitchen, rubbing his hands. ‘Cold out. Where’s Tuppence?’

‘Oh, missus, she’s upstairs with the books.’

‘What, still those miserable books?’

‘Yes. She’s done a good many more today and she’s spent most of the time reading.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Tommy. ‘All right, Albert. What are we having?’

‘Fillets of lemon sole, sir. It won’t take long to do.’

‘All right. Well, make it about quarter of an hour or so anyway. I want to wash first.’

Upstairs, on the top floor Tuppence was still sitting in the somewhat shabby armchair, engrossed in The Black Arrow. Her forehead was slightly wrinkled. She had come across what seemed to her a somewhat curious phenomenon. There seemed to be what she could only call a kind of interference. The particular page she had got to—she gave it a brief glance, 64 or was it 65? She couldn’t see—anyway, apparently somebody had underlined some of the words on the page. Tuppence had spent the last quarter of an hour studying this phenomenon. She didn’t see why the words had been underlined. They were not in sequence, they were not a quotation, therefore, in the book. They seemed to be words that had been singled out and had then been underlined in red ink. She read under her breath: ‘Matcham could not restrain a little cry. Dick started with surprise and dropped the windac from his fingers. They were all afoot, loosing sword and dagger in the sheath. Ellis held up his hand. The white of his eyes shone. Let, large—’ Tuppence shook her head. It didn’t make sense. None of it did.

She went over to the table where she kept her writing things, picked out a few sheets recently sent by a firm of note-paper printers for the Beresfords to make a choice of the paper to be stamped with their new address: The Laurels.

‘Silly name,’ said Tuppence, ‘but if you go changing names all the time, then all your letters go astray.’

She copied things down. Now she realized something she hadn’t realized before.

‘That makes all the difference,’ said Tuppence.

She traced letters on the page.

‘So there you are,’ said Tommy’s voice, suddenly. ‘Dinner’s practically in. How are the books going?’

‘This lot’s terribly puzzling,’ said Tuppence. ‘Dreadfully puzzling.’

‘What’s puzzling?’

‘Well, this is The Black Arrow of Stevenson’s and I wanted to read it again and I began. It was all right, and then suddenly—all the pages were rather queer because I mean a lot of the words had been underlined in red ink.’

‘Oh well, one does that,’ said Tommy. ‘I don’t mean solely in red ink, but I mean one does underline things. You know, something you want to remember, or a quotation of something. Well, you know what I mean.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Tuppence, ‘but it doesn’t go like that. And it’s letters, you see.’

‘What do you mean by letters?’

‘Come here,’ said Tuppence.

Tommy came and sat on the arm of the chair. Tommy read: ‘“Matcham could not restrain a little cry and even died starter started with surprise and dropped the window from his fingers the two big fellows on the—something I can’t read—shell was an expected signal. They were all afoot together tightening loosing sword and dagger.” It’s mad,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘that’s what I thought at first. It was mad. But it isn’t mad, Tommy.’

Some cowbells rang from downstairs.

‘That’s supper in.’

‘Never mind,’ said Tuppence, ‘I’ve got to tell you this first. We can get down to things about it later but it’s really so extraordinary. I’ve got to tell you this straight away.’

‘Oh, all right. Have you got one of your mare’s nests?

‘No, I haven’t. It’s just that I took out the letters, you see. Well—on this page, you see, well—the M of “Matcham” which is the first word, the M is underlined and the A and after that there are three more, three or four more words. They don’t come in sequence in the book. They’ve just been picked out, I think, and they’ve been underlined—the letters in them—because they wanted the right letters and the next one, you see, is the R from “restrain” underlined and the Y of “cry”, and then there’s J from “Jack”, O from “shot”, R from “ruin”, D from “death” and A from “death” again, N from “murrain”—’

‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Tommy, ‘do stop.’

‘Wait,’ said Tuppence. ‘I’ve got to find out. Now you see because I’ve written out these, do you see what this is? I mean if you take those letters out and write them in order on this piece of paper, do you see what you get with the ones I’ve done first? M-A-R-Y. Those four were underlined.’

‘What does that make?’

‘It makes Mary.’

‘All right,’ said Tommy, ‘it makes Mary. Somebody called Mary. A child with an inventive nature, I expect, who is trying to point out that this was her book. People are always writing their names in books and things like that.’

‘All right. Mary,’ said Tuppence. ‘And the next thing that comes underlined makes the word J-o-r-d-a-n.’

‘You see? Mary Jordan,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s quite natural. Now you know her whole name. Her name was Mary Jordan.’

‘Well, this book didn’t belong to her. In the beginning it says in a rather silly, childish-looking writing, it says “Alexander”, Alexander Parkinson, I think.’

‘Oh well. Does it really matter?’

‘Of course it matters,’ said Tuppence.

‘Come on, I’m hungry,’ said Tommy.

‘Restrain yourself,’ said Tuppence, ‘I’m only going to read you the next bit until the writing stops—or at any rate stops in the next four pages. The letters are picked from odd places on various pages. They don’t run in sequence—there can’t be anything in the words that matters—it’s just the letters. Now then. We’ve got M-a-r-y J-o-r-d-a-n. That’s right. Now do you know what the next four words are? D-i-d n-o-t, not, d-i-e n-a-t-u-r-a-l-y. That’s meant to be “naturally”, but they didn’t know it had two “ls”. Now then, what’s that? Mary Jordan did not die naturally. There you are,’ said Tuppence. ‘Now the next sentence made is: It was one of us. I think I know which one. That’s all. Can’t find anything else. But it is rather exciting, isn’t it?’

‘Look here, Tuppence,’ said Tommy, ‘you’re not going to get a thing about this, are you?’

‘What do you mean, a thing, about this?’

‘Well, I mean working up a sort of mystery.’

‘Well, it’s a mystery to me,’ said Tuppence. ‘Mary Jordan did not die naturally. It was one of us. I think I know which one. Oh, Tommy, you must say that it is very intriguing.’