“And don’t keep secrets from your husband from now on, if you want a peaceful life. All right! I may want to ask you some more questions to-morrow, for now we’ll let you rest and think it over. Jim, I’d like you to go with her, Snaith will drive you down to the old church, and I’ll follow in a few minutes and join you there. After that you can take her home and keep a strict eye on her, see she doesn’t get into any more mischief.”
“She won’t,” said Jim grimly, and twisted a finger furtively in her fair hair, and tweaked it tight.
On the way out, still holding his wife very possessively by the arm, he halted squarely in front of Paddy, and stood looking down dubiously but not particularly penitently at the print of his fingers on the boy’s swollen cheek and ear. The kid looked tired, dazed, battered but content. Large eyes stared back just as appraisingly, withholding judgment but assessing quality. They liked each other. They liked each other very well. True, Paddy did burn for one moment in the dread that Jim would blurt out an apology for the clout, and call everyone’s attention to it; but he should have known better.
“Thanks, mate!” said Jim calmly. “I’ll give you as fair a chance, some day, and we’ll get even.”
“That’s all right, mate,” said Paddy, wooden-faced, and eyeing the precise spot at the angle of Jim’s jaw where ideally he should connect. “And I’ll take it.”
“Come three or four years,” observed Jim, looking him over critically, “I reckon you’ll be about ready, too.” There wasn’t much muscle on the light body yet, but he had a nice long reach, and speed, and spirit enough for an army.
“I reckon so,” said Paddy; and with mutual respect they parted.
A concerted sigh of relaxation and wonder and speculation went round the room as soon as the door had closed, and the sound of feet descending the stairs had ebbed to a distant, lingering echo. They stirred and rose, drawing together round the desk.
“You believe her story?” asked Simon.
“Yes, I believe it. All of it, maybe, most of it, certainly. Maybe Jim’s clever enough to put over an act of knowing nothing about it, but I don’t think so.”
“He didn’t know,” said Paddy, standing up in the middle of events with authority, for hadn’t he precipitated this single-handed? “They were rowing when I got there, before I ever got in the house. She was all nerves and cried if he looked at her, and he was just about frantic trying to get sense out of her. Why should he act when there was nobody else there?”
“I’m prepared to accept that,” agreed Hewitt benevolently. “Rose has cleared up quite a number of things for us, but she hasn’t shed any light on who killed her father. There’s nothing to put Jim out of the running for that, so far.”
“He didn’t know about the tunnel into the vault,” said Paddy doggedly, “so he couldn’t have put him there.”
“Oh, yes, he could, laddie. Finding a back way in doesn’t block the front door. There was a key almost anyone could get at. There could be others who knew about the back door, too, of course. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t say Jim makes a good suspect, but he isn’t out of it. We’ve got plenty to do yet—looking into Trethuan’s finances, for one thing.”
He reached for his hat, smothering a yawn. “Well, I’ll be off down and take a look at Rose’s swivelling stone. Care to come along?”
“Not me,” said Tim firmly, after a quick glance at his son. “Paddy and I are off home.”
Paddy wasn’t really sorry. He’d had enough excitement for one day, and a mere hole in the wall isn’t so wonderful, once located. Secret tunnels sound fine, but they’re two-a-penny wherever there was organised smuggling a couple of hundred years ago, whether on a sporting or a commercial scale. It would keep. He went down the stairs after the others, Tim’s arm about his shoulders.
“Well, at any rate,” said Simon, as they emerged into the faint, starry, salty coldness of after-summer and not- yet-autumn, “we do know now what Trethuan was acting so cagey about, why he didn’t want the tomb opened.”
“Do we?” said George Felse.
“Don’t we? With all that stuff there to be found—”
“Ah, but it wasn’t there. There was nothing there this morning but the body—remember? He must have made a special journey, last Sunday, and taken away all that was left of Morwenna’s treasure. At any rate, on Monday he gave it to Rose to hide for him. Once that was done, what was there to betray him? No one would know he’d been stealing it, no one would ever know it had been there at all. Oh, no,” said George pensively, “we haven’t found out yet why Trethuan was so mad to keep you out. It certainly wasn’t because of Mrs. Treverra’s money and jewels, removing them was no problem. They were a good deal more portable than the—purely hypothetical, of course,— brandy. No, the most puzzling thing about that little hoard is something quite different.”
They had halted beside the cars. “Such as what?” asked Simon.
“Such as: What was it doing there in the first place?”
“That’s it! That’s it exactly! The way it looks,” sighed Hewitt, sliding into the driving seat, “no one ever told Mrs. Treverra that you can’t take it with you.”
CHAPTER IX
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
« ^ »
DOMINIC CAME DOWN to lunch in his best suit, and with a demure gait to match, threaded his way between the tables in the bar, and slid on to the stool next to his mother’s, in the approved casual manner.
“Dry Martini, please, Sam.”
“Darling, you
“Careful, now!” cautioned Sam, with a face so straight that apart from the moustache it was practically featureless. “That vermouth’s powerful stuff.” He spared a moment, in spite of the noon rush of business after church, to admire his young guest’s grave Sabbath appearance. “I hear you’ve got old Hewitt coming to lunch.”
