Fallen Into the Pit

back into the bedroom still talking. “It was only a thin chance, but that was the only place we could think of to start. And I know you told me to keep out of it, over and over, but honestly I couldn’t.” He paused in the middle of slithering into his flannels. “You’re not mad at me now, are you?”

“What’s the use?” said George. “That wouldn’t stop you. So that’s why you went to such a daft place on a night when it was sure to be sodden with rain!”

“Yes, and honestly, I hadn’t the remotest notion how late it was, it didn’t seem to have been any time at all. I suppose we were just busy, and didn’t notice, but really, I had a shock when I saw the clock. Well, then we were in a bit of a mess already, and I thought of the outflow, and climbed up on the stones. And one of the silly things rolled away and let me down in the water, and that’s when I put my hand on this thing I told you about, right down between the pebbles in the bed of the stream. And that’s what I wanted to tell you about last night, only I couldn’t get a word in for Mummy. Look, it’s here!” He loped across to the drawer, and fished out the shield, and laid it triumphantly in George’s palm. His light, bright hazel eyes searched the judging face anxiously. “You do see what it is, don’t you? It’s off a walking-stick—or anyhow, off something thin and round like a walking-stick. And tapered, too, because look, the curve at the bottom of the shield is a little bit closer than at the top. I was awfully careful not to bend it out of shape at all. And you see, it fitted in with what I’d been thinking so exactly. So I brought it for you. Because how else would a silver plate from a stick get in there under the outflow, except the way I said?”

“How, indeed?” said George absently, staring at the small thing he turned about in his fingers. “Can you show me exactly where this was? The very spot? Oh, I’ll guarantee you absolution this time, even if you fall in the brook again.”

“Yes, of course I can!” He began to glow, because George was taking him seriously, because George wasn’t warning him off. “I made a note—there’s a special dark-colored stone with veins in it. I could put this right back where it was wedged. You do think it’s important, don’t you?”

“I think it is, I’m sure it may be. But we shall see if they can find anything interesting in these grooves of the pattern. Can’t expect much of a reaction after a fortnight in the brook, I’m afraid, but with a crumpled edge like this top one you never know.”

“And it was partly silted over,” said Dominic eagerly. “That would protect it, wouldn’t it? And if we could find the stick it came from, there ought to be marks, oughtn’t there? Even if he tried to hide them. The shape of the shield might show, and anyhow, the tiny holes where it was fastened. Dad, before you take it away, d’you mind if I make a tracing of it? In case, I mean, I might see a stick that might be the one.”

George gave him a distracted smile, and said: “Yes, you can do that. But make haste and brush your hair— straighten it, anyhow. Detective or no detective, you’ve got to go to school, and you’d better be in good time. Don’t worry, I won’t shut you out of your own evidence. You shall know if it helps us. Fair’s fair! Now get on!”

“But my copy,” said Dominic agitatedly, through the sound of the brush tugging at the ridiculous fluff of his hair. “I shan’t have time to make it now, and you’ll take it away before I come home.”

“I’ll do it for you. Mind you, Dom, I should like it much better if you’d do as I asked, and stay out of it. It’s not the sort of business for you, and I wish you’d never been brought into it in the first place.” Dominic was very silent indeed, for fear of being thought to have made some response to this invitation. George sighed. “Well, it wasn’t your fault, I suppose. Anyhow, you shall have your copy.”

“If only Mummy had let me speak, I could have told you all about it last night.” The point was still sore, because it was so unlike Bunty to close her ears; and Dominic kept returning to rub incredulously at the smart. “It wasn’t a bit like her, you know. I mean, she’s always so fair. That’s what I couldn’t understand. What got into her, to make her like that? I know it was awful to be so late, and all that, but still she always listens to what I’ve got to say, but last night she wouldn’t let me say a word.”

“It’s quite understandable, in the circumstances,” said George. “If I could have been at home with her it wouldn’t have been so bad. But I came home only about ten minutes before you did, and found her frantic, still waiting for you. She’d been along finally to the Shock of Hay, and found that Pussy was missing, too, but nobody’d got a clue where either of you had gone. She’d just finished telling me all about it, and I was putting my coat on again to come out and look for you, when you sneaked in. No wonder you caught it hot, my lad!”

“Well, no, but still— Mummy isn’t like all the others, who fly off the handle for nothing. I mean, she doesn’t panic about lateness, and jump to the conclusion that people have been run over, or murdered, or something, just because they don’t come in when they ought to. Not usually, she doesn’t.”

“Not unless there’s a reason,” said George, “but last night was a bit different. She was scared stiff about you, and that’s why you got rather a rough time of it when you did turn up. I may as well tell you,” he said soberly. “You’d hear all about it at school, anyhow, and I’d rather you heard it from me.” Dominic had stopped brushing, with the length of his disorderly hair smoothed down over his forehead, partly obscuring one eye, and in this odd condition was staring open-mouthed at his father. Something made him move close to him, the brush still forgotten in his hand. George took him by the arms and held him gently, for pleasure and need of touching him.

“You see, Dom, last night there was another death. Briggs, the gamekeeper up at the Harrow, rang up soon after eight o’clock from the top call-box, and told me he’d just found Charles Blunden in the woods there, with his own shotgun lying by him, and both barrels in him. He hadn’t dared tell the old man, I had to do that when I got up there. It may have been suicide. It could just, only just, have been an accident. Only people here don’t believe in accidents any more. It went round the village like wildfire. That’s why,” he said, soothing Dominic’s blank white stare with a rather laborious smile, “a late son last night was a son who—might come home, or might not. Like the old man’s son! So don’t hold it against Bunty if she took it out of you for all the hours she’d been waiting. If I’d known you weren’t home I’d have been pretty edgy myself.”

Dominic’s sudden small hand clutched hard at his arm. “Did you say Charles Blunden?” His voice was a queer small croak in moments of stress, already beginning to hint at breaking. “But—when did he find him? And where?”

“He rang up soon after eight. The doctor said Charles hadn’t been dead any time, probably not more than half an hour. It’s by sheer luck he was found so soon, because nobody would have paid the least attention to the shots. There were several guns out all round the village, one report more or less just vanished among the rest. He was up in the top wood, apparently heading toward the house.”

Dominic, with fixed eyes and working lips, made frantic calculations. “I went out a bit before seven, didn’t I? The bus from the green is at five minutes to. Yes, I must have gone out more like a quarter to, because John dawdles so, it would take nearly ten minutes down to the green. And where was it they found him? In the top wood?”

“Yes, lying by the path about two hundred yards in from the stile on to the mounds. You’ll be late, Dom. Go and eat, and we’ll talk about it this evening. After all, the poor devil’s dead, we can’t do anything for him.” George put a rallying arm round his son’s shoulders, and gave him a shake to stir him out of what appeared to be a trance; but Dominic seized him by the lapels, and hung on to him with frantic weight.