A Nice Derangement Of Epitaphs Part 6

"We didn't believe there ever was one. But, my G.o.d, now I'm beginning to wonder. It's like this, you see. There were these two boys, and it seemed Dominic had seen Paddy swimming dangerously far out off the point, and felt he ought to go and bring him in. But when he did, Paddy up and swore he thought he'd seen a body going out with the tide, and was trying to reach him. Dom and I went in again to see if we could see anything of him, but never a sign. Neither of us thought there was anything in it. But now-if Trethuan really drowned in the sea, as it seems he probably did-"

"About what time would that be?"

"Past five, maybe as late as half past, or even a little later. Could Could it have been? As early as that?" it have been? As early as that?"

"And only young Paddy actually claims he saw anything?"

"Even he wasn't positive. But he was worried. I promised I'd notify the coastguard, just to satisfy him, and I clean forgot. Not believing in it, you see, and then there was no report of anyone missing. I wish now I'd taken it more seriously."

Hewitt looked at Tim. "We'd better get hold of your boy, Mr. Rossall, and let him tell his own story. There may be nothing in it, but we can't afford to miss anything."

"I'll call him and tell him to bike over here. He'll come like a bird."

"Do. And maybe we'd better get your boy, too, Mr. Felse. He was on the scene before Mr. Towne arrived, there just may be something he can tell us." He handed the telephone across his desk, and Tim dialled his own number.

And thus began the great hunt for Paddy Rossall.

"No, he isn't," said Phil. "He didn't come home to lunch. I took it for granted he'd sneaked round to the dunes to watch your operations from a distance, since you wouldn't let him in on the ground floor. Maybe he cadged a lunch with Aunt Rachel. Try there. I'm waiting for those apricots, the monkey!" She added at the last moment, with the first faint and distant hint of anxiety in her voice: "Call me back if you find him, Tim, won't you?"

"No, he isn't," said Miss Rachel, with some asperity because of her own irrepressible conscience. "Tamsin took a snack out to him about half past eleven, and he'd already filled his basket and gone. Naturally I took it he'd taken them home to Phil. Oh-and he hasn't been near the church, either? He'd want to keep out of sight, of course. Well, don't fuss over him, Tim, that's fatal. He'll come home when he's hungry."

She replaced the receiver with unnecessary violence, and found Tamsin studying her very narrowly across the desk.

"I gather Paddy didn't go home."

"No, he didn't. You said yourself where he'd most likely be," snapped Miss Rachel.

"I know I did, but it seems he isn't. And I didn't know, when I published my estimate, what you'd been saying to him-did I?"

"You still don't," pointed out Miss Rachel, all the more maliciously for the alarm she couldn't quite allay, and wouldn't acknowledge. "He'll come home when he's got everyone nicely worried, that's what he's after. I'm not going to fall for that, if you're stupid enough to buy it. Children are born blackmailers."

He was perfectly all right, of course. He was simply hiding somewhere and sulking, and gloating over the uneasiness he was causing everyone. Well, it wasn't going to work. He'd run away once, as a very small boy-like many another before him, in dudgeon over some fancied injustice. But he'd come home fast enough when it began to rain. Children are realists; they know which side their bread's b.u.t.tered.

"No, he isn't," said Dominic, surprised. "Have you got Dad there? No, not to worry, only we heard the rumours that are running round, and we couldn't help wondering. But we haven't seen anything of Paddy. Yes, of course I'll come, like a shot. Well, I've been out there on the Head part of the morning, it is is like a grandstand, but I haven't seen hide or hair of Paddy. Look, suppose I scout round now, before I come down, and see if I can find out anything? No, there's hardly anybody hanging about round the church now, only a handful of people who were late coming, but I'll have a look there, too. Sure, I'll be down as soon as I can make it." like a grandstand, but I haven't seen hide or hair of Paddy. Look, suppose I scout round now, before I come down, and see if I can find out anything? No, there's hardly anybody hanging about round the church now, only a handful of people who were late coming, but I'll have a look there, too. Sure, I'll be down as soon as I can make it."

"He isn't anywhere," said Tim, banging down the receiver for the tenth time. Dominic was already with them by then, with a negative report and a curiosity that positively hurt him, though he was containing it manfully. "That's all his closest friends crossed off. And he hasn't had anything to eat! I don't like it."

Hewitt didn't like it, either. His solid face, conditioned to the suppression of all feeling except the deceptive pessimism he used for business purposes, was letting anxiety through like a slow leak.

"He wouldn't go off anywhere out of town without telling anyone. He isn't irresponsible. It isn't that he'd do anything harebrained. But anyone can have an accident."

"I'm wondering," said Hewitt heavily, "if he saw something else, when he saw-or thought he saw-that body in the water. Maybe without at all realising the significance of what he was seeing. I'm wondering if he saw someone someone else, say up on the Head above the rocks, just at the crucial moment. Or whether somebody who was up there may else, say up on the Head above the rocks, just at the crucial moment. Or whether somebody who was up there may think think Paddy saw him, even if he didn't." Paddy saw him, even if he didn't."

"You don't think he could be in danger?" asked Tim, shaken and pale.

"I'd have said no, up to this noon. But now it's all over this town that Trethuan's body has turned up, and the hunt's on. Whoever killed him will be pretty desperate now to remove anyone who may-even may-have noticed and recognised him, and may blurt out to the police what he knows."

"Then we've got to find Paddy, quickly. My G.o.d, if anything happened to him-"

"Nothing will happen to him," protested Simon strongly. "He'll turn up soon, safe and sound, and with a perfectly simple explanation, you see if he doesn't."

But Hewitt was already on his feet, and reaching for the telephone. "I'd rather not wait, Mr. Towne. What was he wearing this morning? Oh, Blakey, I want every man we can spare, we've got a full-scale hunt on our hands. We've lost a boy-young Paddy Rossall, most of our fellows will know him on sight. Missing with a bike, since this morning. Yes, we need everybody."

"Well, if it's like that, you've got a handful of volunteers right here," said Simon, solid and calm at Tim's shoulder. "You're the boss, where do we start?"

Tamsin turned from her uneasy pacing along the range of the library windows, and marched through the doorway into Miss Rachel's sitting-room. The old lady looked up with a face resolutely complacent, and told herself for the twentieth time that day that young people nowadays had no stamina. No wonder all modern children were spoiled.

"They still haven't found him," said Tamsin. "I'm sick of this, I'm going down to help look for him."

"You're going to do nothing of the sort. Don't be foolish. His parents are bad enough, there's no need for you to start. The boy is where he went of his own will, you may be absolutely sure, and he'll turn up when it suits him. When he's demoralised everybody so much that he needn't fear reprisals. Not before!"

"You," said Tamsin forcefully, "are a heartless old woman, that's what you are. I wish you'd tell me what you did to him this morning. I know there's something."

"What I did to him, indeed! Don't be impertinent! I'm the old woman who pays your salary, at any rate," said Miss Rachel tartly, because no matter how firmly she held the door, the demons were getting through it. "You'd better remember that, miss. I hate dining alone, and you know it. And I haven't had my game of chess. So stop being melodramatic, and get the board."

"You'll have to make do with patience," said Tamsin. "I shan't be here."

Miss Rachel called after her towards the door, in high indignation. "If you go, you needn't bother to come back."

"Good-bye, then," said Tamsin pleasantly, and closed the door after her without even a slam.

Miss Rachel, left alone, was astonished and annoyed to find herself crying.

CHAPTER V.

FRIDAY EVENING.

THE TIDE WAS two hours past the full, and it was getting dark. The cauldron off the point was just going off the boil, slivers of slate-grey pebbly beach showed between the fangs of the Dragon, rimmed with sc.u.mmy foam. The Dragon's Hole, which pierced clean through the headland near its narrowest point, and acted as a spectacular blow-hole as the tide streamed in to its highest, was merely breathing spume now in a desultory manner, as though the Dragon was falling asleep. Soon the dripping crown of the arched entrance would heave clear of the water, and the level would sink magically fast, to leave the whole rocky gateway clear. At low tide you could clamber and walk right through it, and emerge in the snaky little haven on the Pentarno side. Certain regions of the complex of caverns inside were always above water, but for three hours before and after high tide both entrances were submerged.

They were all in the hunt by then. Phil had driven in from the farm in the Mini, pale and strained and violently silent, matched herself with the first partner who happened to come in with his periodical, and negative report, and gone off with him to scour the most distant of the Maymouth beaches. Fate dealt her George, for which she was grateful, because that compelled her to behave sensibly and contain her terrors; she couldn't have borne to be with Tim just then, to double his anguish and her own.

Bunty had come down from the hotel, determined not to be left out, workmanlike in slacks and a windjacket, and was quartering the country fringes of Maymouth with the Vicar, in case Paddy had had a fall or a crash somewhere on his intended way home. There were precipitous lanes he might have chosen to use, to vary the monotony of his journey, and a cyclist can come to grief on even the quietest of roads, given a little carelessness or a too-optimistic local driver who a.s.sumes no one uses these by-ways but himself. Everyone who was at all intimate with the boy had been telephoned and asked to keep in touch. What more could they do but just look everywhere, and go on looking?

Tamsin and Dominic had worked their way the length of the harbour, down on the mud, following up the receding tide, and come empty-handed to the remotest rocks under the wall, where ashlar gave way to granite and shale, and the jagged scales of the Dragon leaned over them. The sea still lipped the cliffs here, they could go no farther as yet. They turned inland, hugging the cliff wall, winding in and out of its many razor-edged alcoves, and the crying of the subsiding waves followed them mournfully. They were drenched with spray and very muddy. Dominic had the torch, and sometimes turned to empty its light carefully before her feet in the rough places, and give her a hand. She knew every inch of this sh.o.r.e, but she took the hand, just the same. They were both glad of the touch. This had been going on for such a long time now, and where can you lose a sensible, responsible boy of fifteen, where, at least, that hadn't already been searched? Except in the sea! They wouldn't think that, they couldn't, it was unthinkable. Paddy was strong, shrewd and capable, and knew his native coast. He was alive, he must be alive.

They climbed slowly out of the pebbly fringes of the sea, towards where the first steep path plunged down from the Dragon's Head. A surging rush of air was all the warning they had. They sprang apart before the hurtling onslaught of something that came bounding down the slope, flashed between them, and was dragged to a noisy stop by a toe horribly scoring the turf. Small, invisible things hopped and rolled under their feet. A voice, anxious, urgent and low, panted: "Tam, is that you?"

Stumbling and slipping on the rolling missiles, Tamsin groped for a tweed sleeve. Dominic turned the torch, and Simon's face started out of the dark, abrupt in black and white, strained to steel-sharpness, for once utterly bereft of its light, world-weary smile.

"Simon, for G.o.d's sake! What are you trying to do, kill yourself? Fancy riding a bicycle down-"

Tamsin stopped, swallowed, drew breath hard and was silent. The light of the torch pa.s.sed briefly over the frame of the bicycle, the carrier on the front, the basket spilling small oval fruit. They had no colour by this light, but Tamsin knew them for apricots. She whispered, "Where did you find it?"

"In the gorse, up by the cliff path there. Put down quite carefully, the basket lifted out. Near the edge," said Simon, low-voiced and ashen-faced. "Not exactly hidden. Laid down out of the way."

"He did it himself?"

"I think so. I hope so. I'm going to turn it in at once, in case it can tell us anything."

"Where along the path?" she demanded intently. Her voice had lost its reserve in Simon's presence, and its sting, too, as his face had lost its a.s.sured sophistication. It was as if they had never b.u.mped into each other without masks before, and now that they had, they couldn't even see each other. along the path?" she demanded intently. Her voice had lost its reserve in Simon's presence, and its sting, too, as his face had lost its a.s.sured sophistication. It was as if they had never b.u.mped into each other without masks before, and now that they had, they couldn't even see each other.

"Farther out. Over the blow-hole, about. Have you been down there?"

"We couldn't yet, not so far. It's going out fast now, though, we'll follow on down."

"Do, Tam, please. I'll be with you as soon as I can."

"Do you think he could have fallen?" she asked, desperately quietly.

"I don't know. I won't think so. I-Oh, Tam!" said Simon suddenly, his voice almost inaudible, and caught at her hand for a moment; and instantly pulled away from her, climbed unsteadily on to the bicycle that was too small for him, and wobbled away recklessly across the b.u.mpy waste of turf to the road and the town. Soiled and dishevelled and faintly ridiculous, and for once wholly, pa.s.sionately intent upon someone other than himself, without a thought for the preservation of his image or his legend.

Dominic switched off the torch; and after a moment he put an arm delicately but quite confidently about Tamsin, and turned her towards the sea.

They followed the receding tide down the beach yard by yard, ranging along the edge of the water and coasting round into every new complexity of the cliff wall, which ran down here in striated, shaly strata into the litter of flat, blue pebbles and eroded sh.e.l.l. A certain amount of lambent light showed along the breaking foam, and gleamed from the streaming rocks, and their torch, a thin pencil in the dark, probed the corners where even the starlight could not reach.

"That was was Simon?" said Tamsin suddenly, all the old obduracy back in her voice. Simon?" said Tamsin suddenly, all the old obduracy back in her voice.

"Well, that's what you called him," said Dominic cautiously.

"Thanks. Just making sure. It's the first time I ever saw him when he didn't have an imaginary mirror in front of him. He must be really fond of Paddy."

"He is," said Dominic.

"Do I detect a note of reproof in your voice, Mr. Felse?"

He said nothing. What was the good? Only a tiny corner of her mind fretted at the memory of Simon off his guard, and that was to make their one overwhelming anxiety bearable, like pinching yourself to take your mind off a hideous toothache. Any serious thinking she was going to do about it would be done later, in repose, when, please G.o.d, they'd have Paddy Rossall safe in bed, and Simon restored to his old image. And then he'd start rubbing her up the wrong way all over again.

"You'll notice," she said perversely, her shoes slipping in the weedy crevices of the rock, "he never asks me to marry him when there might be the slightest fear of me saying yes." She slithered into the edge of an invisible pool, and Dominic caught her by the arm and drew her back on to safe ground.

"All right?"

"Fine! Just a shoe-full of sea. It can't make me any wetter." She held on to him for a moment, steadying herself. Her hands were very cold. He saw her face close to him, feathers of wet hair plastered to her cheek, her eyes sombre and wretched. "Dom-we shall find him, shan't we?"

"Yes," he said, very firmly. "He's a sensible kid, I don't believe he'd let anyone creep up on him, and I don't believe he'd do anything daft himself." Which from eighteen to fifteen, when Tamsin came to think of it, was pretty generous, but he sounded as if he really meant it. "He'll be found intact," said Dominic strenuously, "and with any luck, we shall be the ones to find him. So hang on, and let's have a look round the next corner."

They had looked round a good many by then, with their hearts in their mouths at every turning, but so far there'd been no slight, tumbled body under the cliffs, and nothing washing about in the edge of the retreating waves but casual weed.

"Yes," she said docilely. And after a moment, very quietly at his shoulder: "You're a nice boy, Dominic Felse, I like you."

"Good! I like you, too, I like you a lot. There, you see, nothing!" He couldn't help reflecting, as soon as it was out, that nothing was a pretty poor return for all their hunting, and a pretty lame rea.s.surance for Paddy's mother. But it was all they had, and it was better than the wrong thing, at any rate.

The sea sighed away from them, down the more steeply tilted shingle. They stood close under the overhang of the cliff, on a washed and empty sh.o.r.e, and right above their heads must be the necklace of the lofty path that circled the Dragon's Head, and the scattered hollows of gorse where Simon had found the bicycle. The waters had left the arched entrance of the cave now, it stood tamed and dark above a faint glimmer of salt puddles penned among the boulders.

They halted for only a second, contemplating it together.

"He wouldn't," said Tamsin, "would he?"

"Not without a reason, but he may have had a reason, how do we know?"

"But he knows the tides, he wouldn't let himself get caught."

"Something may have happened that didn't leave him any choice. Anyhow, we're not leaving anything out."

"Careful, then," she cautioned, drawing him to the right, to the landward side of the thin channel of water that lay prisoned among the pebbles in the cavern's mouth. "This side's the smoothest going. And look out, there are holes."

Dominic fell into one at that moment, cold salt water gripped him to the knees, and the chilling shock surprised a muted yell out of him. Deep in the blackness beyond the beam of the torch, echo took the shout and volleyed it back to him redoubled.

"Dom!" Tamsin caught at his arm. "Did you hear that?"

Floundering out of the crevices on slippery oblique rock, he supposed that she was as startled by the force and complexity of the echo as he had been, and merely went on scrambling noisily up to safer ground. "Hear it? I started it. It wasn't that good an imitation-"

"No-listen!" She shook him impatiently, and he froze into obedient silence, straining his ears.

Nothing at first, not a sound; then they were aware of the ceaseless, soft, universal sound of the dripping of sea water from every jutting point of the stone ceiling above them and the contorted walls around, and the soft, busy flowing of a dozen rivulets draining down between the pebbles into the central channel behind them. The place was full of the sounds of water, but empty of the sounds of men.

"But it wasn't all echo. I'm sure!"

Almost fearfully, Dominic called upward into the invisible s.p.a.ces of the cave: "Paddy?"