A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

CHAPTER I

WEDNESDAY

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THE BOY in the sea was in difficulties, that was plain from the first moment Dominic clapped eyes on him. Only a seal could possibly navigate off the Dragon’s Head in a tide like this one, racing out on the ebb with the impetus of an express train, checking and breaking back again like hammers on the toothed rocks, lashing out right and left in bone-white spray, and seething down through the wet sand in deep clawmarks, with a hissing like the old serpent of legend striking and missing his prey. For a mile off the point, far into deep water greener than emeralds, the sea boiled. Nobody in his senses swam there in an ebbing tide.

He cupped his hands and yelled, and the bobbing head, a small cork tossed in a cauldron of foam, heaved clear of the spray for an instant and turned towards him a pallor which must be its face. He yelled again, and peremptorily waved the swimmer inshore. The clamour of the ebb off the point might well have carried his voice away, but the gesture was seen and understood. And ignored. The head vanished in foam, and reappeared tossing off spray, battling doggedly outward.

Dominic looked round wildly for someone else to take the decision from him, but there was nobody. This wasn’t the populous Maymouth side of the Dragon, but the bleak bay of Pentarno on the northern side, and tea-time of a fine but blowy day, when nobody frequented those sandy wastes. Mile upon mile of drifted sand on his right hand, and inland, beyond the processional dunes, the first green of pasture and gold and brown of stubble; and on his left the craggy bastions of the Dragon’s Head, running out to sea in a grapeshot of scattered rocks, the cliff paths a six-strand necklace above him, a tapering crescent of pebbles below. Not a local in sight to take the load from him. And if he didn’t make up his mind quickly it might be too late. Better make a fool of yourself than watch some other fool kid drown himself before your eyes.

Oh, damn! Whether he was in trouble or not—!

Dominic launched himself from the path and went down the last slope of thinning grass and shale in a long, precarious slither, to arrive upright but staggering in the grey pebble shelf under the rocks, just clear of the hissing water. It was falling rapidly now, and this was no very good place to go in, but he had no choice. He shed his shirt and slacks, kicked off his sandals, and waded into water that ran back before him, snatching its last fringes away from his toes in a scurry of foam. He overtook it, felt his way as fast as he dared down the broken slippery descent, took one last rapid sighting, and struck out strongly towards the boy in the sea.

The first stages were easy, and he knew his own capabilities and could trust himself in this much of a sea, even if his own experience had been, gained in the makeshift river-and-swimming-bath conditions of a land-locked county. But the currents off these rocks were something nobody would willingly venture in a fast ebb like this, and the thought of the jagged teeth ripping up the water into oil-green ribbons clung in his mind through every minute of that swim. Half a mile northward, and the mild, long rollers would be sliding innocently down the level sand, as harmless as the ripples in a baby’s bath. Here he had a fight on his hands.

He dug his shoulders into it, head low, edging away from the rocks with every stroke. Once he hoisted himself out of the trough to take a fresh sighting, and found the boy by the glimpse of a slender arm flung clear of the water for an instant. Nearer than Dominic had expected. And perhaps still clear of the treacherous pull of the rocks. Maybe he’d known what he was doing, after all. Maybe he was one of the harbour kids, bred from some ancestry involving fish, and did this every afternoon for fun.

But no, that wouldn’t do. The harbour kids simply didn’t go in off the point, they had too much sense. The ones who can do nearly everything never push their luck to the last rim, because they don’t have to prove anything, they know.

Well, if this kid was the strongest swimmer on the North Cornish coast, he was coming ashore now, if his rescuer had to knock him out to bring him.

The sea flung them together almost unexpectedly in the end; two startled faces, open-mouthed, hair streaming water, glared at each other out of focus, six inches of ocean racing between them hard and green as bottle-glass. Dominic caught at a thin, slippery arm, and gripped it, pulling the boy round to lie against his body. The boy opened his mouth to yell, and choked on water, rolling helplessly for a moment; and then he was being towed strongly back towards the shore, and seemed to have lost all command of his own powers at the shock of such an indignity. He recovered almost as quickly, and suddenly he was a fury. He jerked himself free and tried to dive under his rescuer, but he had met with a resolution as grim as his own. The plunging head was retrieved painfully by its wet hair, and clipped smartly on the ear into the bargain. The sea effectively quenched the resulting yell of rage, and Dominic recovered his hold and kicked out powerfully for the distant sands.

For the first stage of that return journey, in the event more arduous and tedious than risky, he got no help from his passenger. But after a few minutes he was aware of a considerable skill seconding his own strokes; however sullenly, certainly to good effect. The kid had given up and resigned himself to being hauled ashore; and at least, having gone so far, he had sense enough to reason that he might as well make the journey as quickly and comfortably as possible. They came in like that, together, struggling steadily northward across the tug of the undertow into the sunny water off the beach, until they touched ground, and floundered wearily through the shallows, feet sliding, deep into the soft, shaken sands.

Rising out of the water was an effort that sucked out their strength suddenly, and set them trembling and buckling at the joints with the realisation of their own tiredness. They fell together on their faces, toes still trailing in the receding foam, and lay gasping and coughing up sea-water. And there was the late afternoon sun on their backs, grateful and warm as a stroking hand, and the soft, almost silent waves lapping innocently on the long, level beach that stretched for more than two miles beyond Pentarno.

Dominic hoisted himself laboriously on his hands, and looked at his capture with something between a proprietor’s pride and a keeper’s exasperation. A slim, sunburned body, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, in black swimming trunks. Light brown hair—probably almost flaxen when it was dry—streamed sea-water into the sand. He lay on his folded arms, the fine fan of his ribs clapping frantically for air, like cramped wings. Dominic got to his knees, hoisted the limp, light body by the middle, and squeezed out of him the remainder of the brine he had swallowed.

Hands and knees scrabbled in the sand, and the boy writhed away from him like an eel. Under the lank fall of hair one half-obscured eye, blue and steely as a dagger, glared fury.

“What the hell,” spluttered the ungrateful child, from a mouth bitter with sea-water, “do you think you’re—doing?” He choked and ran out of breath there. Dominic sat back on his heels and scowled back at him resentfully.

“Now, look here, you daft little devil, you’d do better thinking what the hell you were doing, out there in a sea like that. Don’t you know the bathing’s dead dangerous anywhere off the point? Especially when the tide’s going out, like this. This town marks all the safe places, why can’t you have the sense to stick to ’em? And don’t give me that drop-dead look, either. You can thank your stars I was around. You’d have been in a mess without me.”

“I would not! I wasn’t in trouble—” He wavered for the first time; fundamentally he was, it seemed, a truthful person, even when in a rage. “I could have managed, anyhow. I know the tides round here a lot better than you do, I bet.” The still indignant eyes had sized up a summer visitor without any difficulty. “Damn it, I live here.”

“Then your dad ought to tan you,” said Dominic grimly,“for taking such fool chances.”

“I wasn’t taking chances—not for nothing, I wasn’t.” He heaved a great breath into him, and swept back the fall of hair from his forehead. “I wouldn’t—not without a good reason, my dad knows that. I went in because I saw a man in the sea—”

Dominic was on his feet in a flurry of sand. “You saw a man? You mean, somebody in trouble? Where?”

“Off the point, where I was, where d’you think? There was something being pulled out in the race, anyhow, I’m nearly sure it was a man. I swam out to try and get to him,” said the boy, with bitter satisfaction in shifting the burden of his own frustration to more deserving shoulders,“but you had to take it on yourself to fish me out. So if he’s drowned by now, you know whose fault it is, don’t you?”

Dominic turned without a word, and set off at a run towards the water, his knees a little rubbery under him from shock and exertion. He had gone no more than a few yards when a shout from the dunes behind him brought him round again. The coast road from Maymouth over the neck of the Dragon’s Head to Pentarno dipped closer to the beach here, and a man had just left it to drop in a series of leaps towards the sands. He had come from Maymouth, by the angle at which he appproached. A tall, agile, sudden man who could glissade down loose sand like a skier, and run, once he reached level ground, with the grace of a greyhound and the candour of a child. He came up to them full tilt, and checked in a couple of light steps, already reaching down to hoist the kneeling boy to his feet, examine him in one sweeping glance, and visibly sigh relief.

“Paddy, what’s going on? Are you all right?” He turned an abrupt smile upon Dominic. “What’s he been up to? Did you have to haul him out, or something? But he can swim like a fish.”

“I haven’t been up to anything, Uncle Simon, honestly!” The injured voice grew shrill, and snapped off into a light, self- conscious baritone. Dominic had thought and hoped this might be the father, but even an uncle was very welcome, especially one as decisive as this.

Gratefully he blurted out what most needed saying: “He says he saw a man being dragged out to sea off the point. That’s why he went so far out. But I was up on the path there, and I didn’t see anyone except him. Maybe he’d have been all right—but I was afraid he might not. I thought I ought to fetch him in.”

“You were very right, and I’m most grateful. Even if he isn’t,” said Uncle Simon with the briefest of grins. He stood Paddy before him firmly, and shook him by the shoulders. “Now, what did you see? Somebody throwing his arms about? Shouting for help? What?”

“No, he wasn’t doing anything. Not even swimming. It was like a head just showing now and then, and there was more of it sort of sloshing about under the water—like when you see a drift of wood or some old rags washing about.”

“It could have been just that, couldn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose so—only I don’t think it was.”

“O.K., I suppose we’d better have a hunt round.” He stripped off his sportscoat and shirt, and dropped them beside the boy. “Here, you stay here and mind these.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Dominic.

“Stay well inshore, then. And get out when you’ve had enough. I know this coast, you don’t, and you’ve tired yourself already.” He kicked his feet clear of his grey flannels. “Paddy, you can make yourself useful, too. Get up on the top path, and give us a hail if you see anything.”

He was off down the beach and into the water, Dominic after him. Paddy’s summer tan was only deep ivory compared with the tawny gold of Uncle Simon’s long, muscular back, and the fine, lean arms and legs that sliced through the water without a ripple. His hair was not more than a couple of shades darker. Once in the deep water he swam like a dolphin. With unaccustomed humility Dominic accepted his own lesser part, and forbore from following too far. A man who could move with so much confidence and certainty, off such a thorny coast, had the right to deploy his forces as he thought best, and be obeyed.

He stayed in the water until he felt himself tiring again, and then he came out and made his way along the rocks towards the Dragon’s mouth, as low towards the sea as he dared, watching Simon dive, and surface and dive again, achingly near to the cauldron of the rocks. The worst of the race was over now, the boiling had subsided a little. The swimmer worked methodically outward along the line of the receding tide, came back cautiously towards the rocks again where the worst spite was already spent, and clung to rest. He had torn his knuckles, Dominic saw a pink ooze of blood on the hand that grasped the rock.

“No dice, Paddy?” he called up to the boy above their heads.

“No, nothing.” The voice shouted down a little gruffly and anxiously: “You’d better come in, hadn’t you?” Even an Uncle Simon, presumably, may reach exhaustion finally, and with him Paddy was taking no chances. “It’s no good now, anyhow. Even if it was somebody.”

“All right—yes, I’ll come.”

He dropped carefully into the water and swam back to the sand, preferring that to the slower climb along the rocks. The boys came down, scrambling after him, Dominic with his clothes bundled untidily under his arm.

The tall, tawny, sinewy man stood wringing water out of his hair and streaming drops into the sand. Deep brown eyes surveyed them as they came up, and he twitched a shoulder and shivered a little. It was early September, and the evenings were growing cool. They began to dress in damp discomfort and a sudden chill of depression.

“No sign of anyone.”

“Maybe there wasn’t anyone,” said Paddy grudgingly. “But honestly, I still think there was.”

“All right, Paddy, you couldn’t have done more, anyhow. I’ll notify the coastguard, just in case, if that’ll make you feel better. That’s all we can do. What we all need now is a cup of tea, and some towels. And maybe a drop of rum in the tea. Come on up with us to the farm—Sorry, but what should I be calling you?”

“My name’s Dominic Felse. We’re staying at the Dragon.”

“Well, Dominic, come on home with us, and get warm and dry. Can’t let you run off now, without having thanked you properly.”

Dominic hesitated, half afraid that this might more properly be the time for him to disappear, but deeply unwilling to do so if he could gracefully remain. At eighteen years and one week he held the optimistic view that you can never know too many people or accumulate too many friends; and the success of a holiday depends on what you find for yourself on the spot, not what you bring with you.

“Well—if I shan’t be in the way? I mean—I don’t think Paddy particularly wants to come home with a lifeguard attached. Won’t his people—?” It was a long time since he’d been Paddy’s age, but with a heroic effort of the imagination he could still put himself in the other fellow’s place.

“Now that’s thoughtful of you, but take it from me, Dominic, this is one ego that needs no tenderness from you or anyone.” He took Paddy by the nape of the neck and propelled him briskly towards the rising path that led up through the dunes towards the stubble-fields. “Come on, no argument!” He took Dominic, surprisingly but with absolute confidence, by the neck with the other hand, and hustled them into a trot. He was a man who could do things like that, and not only get away with it, but get himself liked for it, where someone less adept would have given electrifying offence.

“What about Paddy’s clothes?”

“Oh, he came down from home in his trunks. Always does. First thing in the morning, and again in the afternoon. I told you, his parents gave birth to a herring. Come on, run for it!”

And they ran, glad to warm themselves with exercise; across the undulating coastal road, and through the hollow lane to the gate of Pentarno farm. A deep hollow of trees, startlingly lush and beautiful as always wherever there was shelter in this wild and sea-swept land, enfolded the solid grey stone house and the modern farm buildings.

“I don’t live here,” explained Simon as he opened the gate. “I’m just a long-standing nuisance from Tim’s schooldays, that turns up from time to time and makes itself at home.”

The front door stood open on a long, low, farmhouse hall, populous with doors. At the sound of their footsteps on the stone floor one of the doors flew open, and Philippa Rossall leaned out, in denims and a frilly pinafore, her arms flour to the elbow.

“Well, about time! I thought I should have to start ’phoning the hospitals. When you two quit showing up for meals—”

She broke off there, grey eyes opening wide, because there were not two of them, but three. She was middle-sized, and middling-pretty, and medium about everything, except that all the lines of her face were shaped for laughter. She had a mane of dark hair, and lopsided eyebrows that gave her an amused look even in repose, and a smile that warmed the house.

“Oh, I didn’t realise we had company. Hallo!” She took in suddenly their wet and tangled hair, and the way their clothes clung to them, and swung for an instant between astonishment and alarm, but beholding them all intact and apparently composed, rejected both in favour of amusement. “Well!” she said. “Never a dull moment with Simon Towne around. What have you all been doing? Diving off the pier for pennies? No, never mind, whatever you’ve been up to, go and get out of those clothes first, while I get my baking in and make another pot of tea. And be careful how you turn on the shower, the water’s very hot. Simon, find him some of your clothes and take care of him, there’s a lamb. Tim isn’t in from the cows yet.”

Tim came in at that moment by the back door, a large, broad, tranquil person with a sceptical face and guileless eyes, attired in a sloppy, hand-knitted sweater and corduroys.

“Bodies, actually,” said Simon. “Off the point.”

“Eh?” said Tim dubiously, brought up short against this cryptic pronouncement.

“Phil asked if we’d been diving for pennies off the pier. And I said, no, bodies. Off the point. But we didn’t find any. This is Dominic Felse, by the way. Dominic’s staying up at the Dragon. He was kind enough to fish Paddy out of the sea when he was in difficulties. Paddy says he wasn’t in difficulties, but Dominic fished him out, anyhow. So we brought him back to tea.”

“Good!” said Philippa, with such large acceptance that there was no guessing whether she meant to express gratification at having her offspring rescued from the Atlantic, or receiving an unexpected guest to tea. The look she gave Dominic was considerably more communicative, if he had not been too dazed to notice it.

“He fetched me a clip on the ear, too,” volunteered Paddy, who would certainly not have mentioned this circumstance if he had not already forgiven it, and resolved to complete the removal of the smart by exorcism.

“Good!” said Tim. “Somebody should, every now and again. We’re much obliged to you, Dominic. Stick around, if you enjoyed it—there may be other occasions.”

The first, and brief, silence, which it must certainly have been Dominic’s turn to fill, found him speechless, and drew all their eyes upon him in understanding sympathy. It appeared that the Rossall brand of verbal table-tennis had taken at a disadvantage this slender and serious young man who didn’t yet know the rules.

“It’s always this kind of a madhouse here,” Paddy told him kindly. “You’ll get used to it. Just muck in and take everything for granted, it’s the only way.”

But it seemed that was not the trouble. Dominic had not even heard all the latter part of the conversation, and he did not hear this. He looked from Simon to Phil, and back to Simon again, and his eyes were shining.

“You did say Simon Towne? Really? You mean—the Simon Towne?”

“Heaven help us!” said Phil Rossall devoutly. “There surely can’t be two?”

Dominic rushed up the stairs of the Dragon Hotel just after half-past seven, made a ten-minute business of changing, and tapped at his parents’ door. Bunty, who had been struggling with the back zipper of her best dress, relaxed with a sigh of relief, and called him in.

“Just in time, darling! Come and do me up.”

It was convenient to have him there at her shoulder, where she could watch him in the mirror without being herself watched, or observed to be watching. For the dark suit had surprised her. He was no fonder of dressing up, as a general rule, than his father. The look of restrained satisfaction which surveyed the sleek fit of the gold silk sheath over her shoulders, and the pleased pat he bestowed on her almost unconsciously as he closed the last inch of zipper, confirmed what the dark suit and the austere tie had suggested. Apparently she’d done the right thing. He was studying the total effect now with deep thoughtfulness. One more minute, and he’d have his fingers in her trinket-case, or be criticising her hair-style. Something was on for tonight; something she didn’t yet know about. But by the mute, half-suppressed excitement of his face she soon would. Provided, of course, that she didn’t ask.

“I was wondering where you’d got to. You must have walked a long way.”

“Well, no, actually I never got very far. Something happened.”

“Something nice?”

“Yes and no. Not really, I suppose But then, I don’t think there ever was anyone there in the water, I think he just spotted some bit of flotsam. And then I had tea with some people I met.” That had been nice, at any rate; he shone secretly at the remembrance, and with difficulty contained his own radiance. A girl? Bunty didn’t think so, somehow. When remembering and containing encounters with girls he wore another face, conscientiously sophisticated and a little smug. This, though it strove after a man-of-the-world detachment, was the rapt face of a second-former noticed by the skipper of the First Fifteen.

He perched suddenly on the end of the dressing-table stool beside her, and put his arm round her, half to sustain his position, half in the old gambit that made confidences easy. The two faces, cheek to cheek in the mirror, were almost absurdly alike, oval, fair-complexioned, with freckled noses and large, bright hazel eyes. The two thick thatches of chestnut hair—She turned, nostrils quivering to the faint, damp scent, and put up a hand to feel at his forelock.

“Hmm! I see there was at least one someone there in the water. I didn’t know you even took your trunks with you.”

“I didn’t, love! Look, I’ll tell you!” But he’d do it his own way. He tightened his arm round her waist. The brightness was beginning to burst through. “Mummy, do you know who’s staying in Maymouth?”

“Yes, darling, the distinguished Midshire C.I.D. man, Detective-Inspector George Felse, with his beautiful wife, and handsome and brilliant son.” And the said George was already down in the bar, waiting for his family to join him for dinner; and the only concession he had made to the evening was to add a silk scarf to his open-necked shirt. Whereas it looked as if Dominic had everything lined up for a very special impression. She wondered if there’d be time to get George into a suit, and whether she owed it to Dominic to demand such a sacrifice of his father.

“Mummy, you said it! You look gorgeous. How about those black crystals? They’d go beautifully with this dress.”

He had his fingers in among the few bits of finery she’d brought with her, fishing for the necklace he approved. “Keep still. No, but really, Mummy, do you know who’s here? Not in the hotel, staying with some friends of his at the farm over at Pentarno. Simon Towne!”

She opened her eyes wide at the gleaming, triumphant face in the mirror. “No! Is he, really?” Now who on earth, she wondered for a moment, could Simon Towne be? This was a difficult game to play unless you had at least an inkling. Or, of course, there was always the deflationary play. The dead-pan face, the sudden flat, honest voice: “Who’s Simon Towne?”

“Mummy, you shameless humbug! You were keener even than I was on those articles he did on Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. And that book on ancient and modern Peru—remember? Simon Towne is just about the most celebrated roving freelance journalist and broadcaster in the world, that’s who Simon Towne is. As you very well know! And he’s staying with the Rossalls at Pentarno until he sets off on another round-the-world commission in October. And I met him this afternoon!”

And I’m going to meet him to-night, thought Bunty with certainty; that’s what all the fancy-work is for.

She took her exalted son by the arm and sat him firmly down beside her again. “You tell me every word about it, quickly.”

He told her, and she paid him generously in reflected joy, and had no difficulty in appearing duly impressed; even was a little impressed. Yes, George would have to suffer; they couldn’t let Dominic down. Meantime, she had to get downstairs ahead of him. It wasn’t difficult; he’d given her enough clues.

“Sorry, Dom, I’ve mussed your hair a little. It’s a bit fluffy from being wet so recently. Use George’s cream. He left it in the bathroom, I think.”

He went like a lamb. She called after him: “I’m going down, I’ll be in the bar.” And fled. He’d be five minutes re-settling his crest to his satisfaction.

George was on a stool at the bar, leaning on his elbow; long and easy and thin, and physically rather elegant in his heedless fashion, but not dressed for a momentous meeting. Actually Bunty preferred him as he was, but a gesture was called for.

She dug a hard little finger into his ribs from behind, and said softly and rapidly into his ear: “Collar and tie and suit, my boy, and hurry. Dom’s captured a lion, and I think he’s bringing the whole pride in to coffee, or something.”

George turned a face not yet shocked out of its comfortable languor. “Don’t be funny, girl, it’s nearly eight o’clock. There isn’t time. Even if I could be bribed to do it. I’m on holiday, remember?”

“So’s Dom, and I tell you he’s just aching to be proud of us. Just once won’t hurt you. Look at me!”

George did, and smiled. “You look good enough to eat.” He swivelled reluctantly on the stool. “Oh, all right, I’ll do it. But I won’t perform.”

“You won’t get the chance, Dom will be straight man to the lion, and the rest of us will be the audience. Go on, quickly! He’s coming!”

George unfolded his long legs, looked at his watch, and shot away in time to meet Dominic in the doorway. “Lord, I’ve left it late to change. Got talking to Sam, and never noticed the time. Go keep your mother company, I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

Dominic, with a face of extreme maturity and dignity, wound his way between the tables to the bar, and perched himself without a word on the stool next to Bunty’s. She gave him a sweet, wide look which never wavered before his severe stare. Behind the bar Sam Shubrough lifted an interrogatory eyebrow.

“Manzanilla, please,” said Dominic austerely, and slid an uneasy hazel glance sideways at his mother. She hadn’t giggled; she hadn’t made a sound or turned a hair, but the effect was the same. He had been eighteen for such a short time that he hadn’t mastered his face yet on these occasions.

“It’s all right, lamb,” she said in his ear wickedly, “you’re doing fine. You don’t blush any more. But you haven’t quite got over that tendency to a brazen stare yet.”

“Thanks for the tip, I’ll practise in front of a mirror. All right, Mum-Machiavelli,” he said darkly. “You needn’t think I don’t know what a clever minx you are, because I do. Which tie did you tell him to put on?”

“Anything you want to know about Maymouth and environs,” said Tim Rossall, over coffee in the lounge,“just ask that well-known authority, Simon here. He’s never been down here for more than three days at a time, not until this visit, but what he doesn’t know about the place and its history by now isn’t worth knowing. No, I mean it! He made a big hit with my Aunt Rachel, and she’s given him the run of her library up there at the Place.”

“The Place? That’s Treverra Place? That big pile with the towers, at the top end of Maymouth?”

“That’s it. Phoney towers, actually, they built ’em on late in the nineteenth century. The old girl rattles round in that huge dump like a pea in a drum, but she’s still got the money to keep it up, and nobody else has. When she goes the National Trust will have to take it, or else it’ll simply have to fall down.”

“The National Trust wouldn’t touch the place,” said Phil cheerfully. “Tim’s mother was Miss Rachel’s younger sister. He’s the last nephew, and he’s horribly afraid she’ll leave the house to him. There’s a fine kitchen garden, though. She grows splendid apricots—a bit late ripening, but a lovely flavour. They’ll be ready any day now, I must get her to send you some. “

Dominic sat back happily in his corner and surveyed his successful and voluble party. They were all there but Paddy, who had gone to a cinema with friends of his own age; but Paddy, thought Dominic in the arrogance of his eighteen years, would have been bored, anyhow, in this adult circle. And they were getting on like a house afire. They’d liked one another on sight. Phil Rossall looked a different but equally attractive person with her dark hair coiled on top of her head, and her boy’s figure disguised in a black, full-skirted dress. And Simon—no one ever seemed to call him anything but Simon—was the centre of any group he joined, even when he was silent and listening. Everything was going beautifully.

“A wild lot, these Treverras,” Simon was saying, one wicked brown eye on Tim. “I’m thinking of writing the family history. Unless you make it worth my while not to, of course.”

“Me? I’m relying on selling the film rights. Go right ahead. Two of ’em hanged for complicity in various faction plots, one time and another, several of ’em smuggled—”

“They all smuggled,” said Phil firmly.

“But the most celebrated of the lot was the poet-squire, Jan Treverra, in the eighteenth century. Go on, Simon, you’re the expert, tell ’em about Jan.”

“On your own head be it! No one can stop me once I start. But let’s adjourn to the bar, shall we? It’s cosier down there.”

They adjourned to the bar. There was a panelled corner that just held them all, with one place to spare, and Phil spread her skirt across that, with the glint of a smile at Simon.

“That’s for Tam, if she drops in later.”

“Tam?”

“Tamsin Holt, Aunt Rachel’s secretary. It’s only a quarter of an hour’s walk from the Place, across the Dragon’s neck. We’re about on the same level, up here. And I should think the poor girl’s had enough of Miss Rachel by evening. She is,” said Phil blandly, “the real reason for Simon’s passionate interest in the Treverra Library. She’s re-cataloguing it and collating all the family papers. And when she takes off her glasses she isn’t bad-looking. All right, Simon, go ahead, give us the story of Jan Treverra.”

Simon lay back in his corner and talked. Not expertly, not with calculation, it was better than that; halting sometimes, relapsing into his own thoughts, hunting a word and coming up with it thoughtfully and with pleasure, as if it had a taste. Some of his writing was like that, the lamest and the most memorable. Dominic had the impression that those particular pages had been born out of his less happy moments.

“Jan was an individualist who smuggled and wrote and hunted in these parts about the middle of the eighteenth century. You must have noticed St. Nectan’s church, I suppose? You’ll have read about it even before you came here, if you’re the kind of person whe does read a place up before he visits it?”

“We read about it,” admitted George. “We’re the kind.”

“Good, I like that kind. Then you know all about it, and anyhow you can see it from the top windows here. Over in the dunes, where they’ve been planting all the tamarisks to try and stop the sand marching inland. I don’t know exactly what it is about this north coast, but there are several of these areas of encroaching sand, and nearly all of ’em have churches amidships to get buried. It’s never houses, always churches.”

“They’re surely digging out St. Nectan’s, aren’t they?” George looked across at Bunty. “You remember, they’d uncovered all the graveyard when we were over there, and that’s several days ago.”

“We’re digging it out. With these two hands I’ve shovelled sand to get at what I want. The fact is, as Tim will tell you, they do get fits of conscience here every now and again, and dig the place out, but they always forget it again as soon as they’ve finished, and in a couple of months the sand’s got it again. But the point is, that’s where Jan Treverra’s buried. He had a massive tomb dug out for himself there before he was fifty, right down into the rock, and he wrote his own epitaph, ready for when he died. He even wrote one for his wife, too. In verse. Not his best verse, but not bad, at that. And soon after he was fifty he did die, of a fever, so they say. Quite a character was Jan. His life was not exemplary, but at least it had gusto, and it was never mean. He was a faithful husband and a loyal friend. The whole district idolised him, and his wife pined away within six months of his death, and joined him in his famous vault. His poems were pretty good, actually. There’s a tradition that some of them were buried with him, at his own orders, and now Miss Rachel’s developed a desire to find out if it’s true.”

“Not unprompted,” said Phil, “by Simon. Any quest that gives him free access to the library will have our Simon’s enthusiastic support. As long as Tamsin’s in there, of course.”

“Not that it’s getting me anywhere,” admitted Simon with a charmingly rueful smile. “She’s refused me eight times, so far. Funny, she doesn’t seem to take me seriously. Where was I? Oh, yes. On the night following Mrs. Treverra’s funeral there was a sudden violent storm. It drove all the fishing boats out to sea, and wrecked two of them. And young Squire Treverra, the new owner, was out walking by himself on the cliff path when the wind suddenly rose, and he was blown off into the sea and drowned. They never recovered his body. So there never was another burial in the old vault, because by the time the younger brother died it was past 1830, and they’d given up the struggle with the sand, and built St. Mary Magdalene’s, right at the top end of Maymouth. They didn’t intend to lose that one. So for all we know it may be true about the poems in the coffin. Anyhow, as Maymouth’s in the throes of its periodical fit of conscience about letting St. Nectan’s get silted up, we’re in a fair way to find out.”

“You’re thinking of opening the tomb?” asked George with interest.

“We’ve got a dispensation. In the interests of literature. If we miss this chance, who knows when we shall get another?” He thumped a fist suddenly and peremptorily on the oak table. “And I propose—Hear ye! Hear ye!—I propose to do the job the day after to-morrow, as ever is.”

The whole public bar heard it, and several heads turned to grin in their direction; there was nobody among the Dragon’s regulars whom Simon did not know, or who did not know Simon. Sam Shubrough heard it, and beamed broadly over the glass he was polishing. And the girl just entering the bar by the outside door heard it, and turned towards them at a light, swinging walk, her hands in the pockets of her fisher-knit jacket.

“Hallo!” she said, over Dominic’s startled shoulder. “What’s Simon advertising? Carpet sale, or something?”

“Tamsin!” The men shuffled to find foot-room to rise, and Phil drew her skirt close and made room for the newcomer in the circle.

“One thing about a man who announces his intentions through a megaphone,” she said as she sat down and stretched out her long and very graceful legs, “you do at least know where he is, and how to avoid him.”

“You came straight here, a pin to a magnet,” said Simon promptly.

She looked round the table and counted. “There are six of you here. Five would have been enough. Some,” she added, with a smile of candid interest that robbed her directness of all offence, “I don’t know yet. I’m Tamsin Holt.”

Tim did the honours. She smiled last and longest at Dominic, because he was looking at her with such startled and appreciative eyes. “Hallo! Phil told me about you. You pulled her Patrick out of the water this afternoon.”

“Did she tell you he didn’t want to come?” Dominic felt his colour rising; but the tide of pleasure in him rose with it. She was so astonishing, after Phil’s mendacious description. Glasses, indeed! The bridge of her straight nose had certainly never carried any such burden. And as for “not bad-looking ”!

“She told me maybe he didn’t even need to come. But she said she’d like to think there’d always be you around whenever he even might need you. Take it from me, my boy, you’re in. You’ve been issued with a membership ticket.” She looked up over her shoulder, where Sam Shubrough’s granite bulk was looming like one of the Maymouth rocks, a monolith with a good-humoured beetroot for a face. Half of its royal redness was concealed behind a set of whiskers which looked early-nineteenth- century-coachman, but were actually ex-R.A.F., “Hallo, Sam! Nice night for a walk.”

To judge by the small, demure glint that flashed from her eyes to the landlord’s, this meant more than it said. But then, she had a way of making everything a fraction more significant. Ever since she had sat down beside him Dominic had been trying to assimilate the complete image of her, and she wouldn’t give him the chance. She was always in motion, and all he could master was the lovely detail.

“That right, now,” asked Sam interestedly, peering down at Dominic from behind the hedge, “that you fetched young Paddy out? That’s the first time anybody’s ever had to do that. Where’d he manage to get into trouble?”

“Off the rocks of the point, just in the ebb, the worst time.”

“Go on! What possessed a bright kid like him to go out there? He knows a lot better than that.”

“He thought he saw a body being pulled out to sea there,” Dominic explained. “He went in to try and reach him. But we went in afterwards and hunted as long as we could—at least, Mr. Towne did, I didn’t do much—and there wasn’t a sign of anything.”

“A body, eh! Not that it would be the first time, by many a one. But I’ve heard no word of anyone being missing, or of anything being sighted. No boat’s been in trouble for months, this is the best of the season. You reckon there’s anything in it, Simon?”

“I doubt it,” said Simon tranquilly. “He saw something, he’s no fool. But I don’t think for a moment it was a man. Bit of driftwood, or something, even a cluster of weed, that’ll be all.”

“Well,” said Sam comfortably, accumulating empty glasses with large, deft fingers, “if it was a body, we’ll probably know by tomorrow. Way the wind’s setting now, the next incoming tide in the small hours will leave it high and dry on the Mortuary, same as it always does.”

“The Mortuary?” Simon looked up with raised brows.

“That stretch of sand this side the church at Pentarno, where all the weed builds up. Almost anything that goes out off the point comes in again next tide on that reach. Many a one we’ve brought in from there. They don’t call it the Mortuary for nothing.” He stood brandishing his bouquet of dead men, and beamed at them cheerfully. “What’ll it be, Miss Holt? Gin and tonic? Any more orders, ladies and gents?”

George claimed the round, and Dominic backed carefully and gracefully out of it, because both his mother and his father had refrained from looking at him as if he ought to.

Something remarkable had happened suddenly to the circle. The two vehement people, the two who glittered and were always in motion, had fallen still and silent together. Simon was sitting with his hands folded before him on the table, all the lines of his long-boned face arrested in a Gothic mask, the brightness of his eyes turned inward. The stillness of the energetic often has a quite unjustified effect of remoteness and sadness. Their sleep sometimes has a look of withdrawal and death. And Tamsin—Dominic could see her whole for the first time, the pale oval of her face, the broad, determined brow under the smooth fringe of red-gold hair, the thoughtful, fierce and tender mouth, a little too large for perfection but just the right size for generosity and beauty; and the eyes, very dark blue under their startling black lashes, wide and watchful and withholding judgment, fixed upon Simon. If he looked at her she would lower the more steely blue of the portcullis, and her mouth would shape a dart quickly and hurl it. But now she studied, and thought, and wondered, and could not be sure.

“Gin and tonic,” said Sam, leaning between them with the tray. “Bitter? Whisky on the rocks, that’s Simon. Mild—that’s Mr. Felse.”

Simon came out of his abstraction with a start, and reached for his whisky.

“Doing the job down at the church day after tomorrow, are you?” said Sam conversationally. “That’ll be a day for Maymouth. Nobody still kicking about it being irreverent, and all that?”

It was rather quiet in the bar. A frieze of benign local faces beamed at the corner table. A tenuous little cord of private fun drew them all close together for a moment.

“Only the cranks, Sam, only the cranks. Look at the topweight we’ve got on our side. The church sanctions it, and Miss Rachel insists on it. Tim will represent the family’s interests, and the Vicar’ll be there to see fair play. How about you, Sam? Come and make a fourth witness? Ten o’clock in the morning, sharp!”

Just for a fraction of a second those two looked each other blandly in the eye, and the Maymouth regulars grinned like gargoyles along the wall.

“Wouldn’t miss it, Simon,” said Sam Shubrough heartily. “Any time you want a strong-arm man, you call on me. Ten o’clock sharp. I’ll be there.”

From the hotel on the headland a broad path brought them to the slight dip of the Dragon’s neck, where the road between Maymouth and Pentarno clambered over the hump-backed beast that slept in the moonlight. Their path crossed it and moved on through the highest roads, half back-street, half country-lane, of the quiet town of Maymouth, towards the towered monstrosity of Treverra Place.

“It’s a lovely night,” said Dominic dreamily, halting at the edge of the road, unwilling to cross, and shorten the way he still had to walk beside her.

“Lovely,” said Tamsin.

“If you’re not tired—”

“I’m not tired.”

“I thought we could walk along the cliff road towards Pentarno a little way, and then turn in by the other lane.”

“If you like, yes, of course.”

It was his day. She’d said yes to everything he’d suggested, the first dance, the offer to escort her home, and now this delicate prolonging of his pleasure. Perhaps to leave him room to expand and show his paces, because that was what he wanted, and she liked him well enough to give him his head, and certainly needed no help to manage him. Or perhaps to mark more clearly how firmly she had said no to everything Simon had asked of her. She had played Dominic’s game neatly back to him, and she knew already what he didn’t yet know: that he wasn’t in love with her in the least degree, and never would be, though there would be times when he would feel that he was. Nobody was going to get hurt by the game, it wasn’t going to get rough; but they would both enjoy it and learn something from it, and be a little bit the richer ever after. What she hadn’t expected was that he would say anything in the least extraordinary or out of the pattern. And when he had, their relationship had opened out on quite another plane. The game would delight him while his holiday lasted, and make it memorable afterwards. But the second relationship might well last much longer, and be seriously valued by them both. And neither of them would break any hearts. So she went on saying yes; yes to everything.

They had reached the edge of the dunes, and halted there on the seaward side of the road. The moon laid rippling scallops of luminosity along the sea, and away on their right the squat spire of St. Nectan’s tiny church protruded from its hollow of sand, half- obscured by the ruled hedges of tamarisks.

“Tamsin—may I call you Tamsin?”

“Yes, of course, Dominic.”

“Tamsin—how much do you really like Simon?”

She had never been more startled in her life. It hadn’t taken her long to see that he was almost as dazzled by Simon as Paddy himself. She couldn’t blame him; she knew all about that powerful magnetism, even if she herself was immune from responding to it. But he wasn’t protesting or wondering, he was asking her, as one friend to another. Maybe he felt it flattering to be even a make-believe rival of the great man. Or maybe he just wanted to know. Or maybe, even more dangerously, he wanted to hear what she would say, because she wouldn’t be answering him, and that would tell him a great deal.

“I like him well enough, but for certain attitudes. And those I don’t like at all.”

“Then he really has asked you to marry him?”

At first she thought that his sophistication must have slipped very badly to permit him to ask such a thing; then the deliberation of his voice warned her that they were on the second plane, and this was in earnest.

“Yes, he has.”

“Eight times?”

“I haven’t counted. Probably. Most times we meet.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I what? Count?”

“Marry him.”

“Look,” she said, turning her back on the shining innocence of the sea, “even if he meant it, the answer would still be no. But he doesn’t. He’s spoiled and flippant and mischievous, and in bad need of a fall. He’s only had to smile at people all his life, and whatever he wanted has fallen into his lap. And he doesn’t care what he breaks in the process. No, that’s too steep. He just doesn’t realise that he breaks anything, all he sees is his own wants. He’s just having fun with me.”

“I shouldn’t think it much fun,” said Dominic, “to ask you to marry me and get turned down.”

“You’re not Simon, my dear. Do you think he’d be concerning himself with why I turned you down—supposing I ever did?”

“No,” agreed Dominic honestly, “but then, he’s in love with you, and—”

It was the first mistake he had made, fumbling between the two planes of his liking for her, and he was thrown out of his stride by the gaffe. To cover himself he took her rather agitatedly in his arms, gingerly in case she objected, but already almost persuaded she wouldn’t. She was laughing; she shook gently with honest amusement against his chest.

“And you’re not! Go on, say—”

He did not so much lose his head as throw it away, and without it he was much more adept. He felt gently downward with his lips to her mouth, and kissed her. It wasn’t the first time, he knew what he was doing. But perhaps it was the first of its kind, warm and impulsive and affectionate, and quite untroubled.

When it was over he held her for some minutes still, not wanting to talk.

“That wasn’t necessary,” she said in his ear.

“No, I know it wasn’t.”

“Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry?”

“No. I’m glad. I enjoyed it very much, and so did you. But I won’t do it again, because it would spoil it.”

“You,” she said helplessly, “are an extraordinary boy.”

“I wouldn’t be, if I were with an ordinary girl.”

His cheek against hers, the baffling unusualness of the day overwhelming him with the delicious conviction of complete happiness, suddenly he froze. His mind went away from her, somewhere there over her shoulder, down among the dunes. She pushed him away suddenly, and turned to look.

“Tamsin, do you see what I see? Look, there between the tamarisks.” One man, two, three, slipping along out of the landward hollow, keeping in the tenuous shade of the young hedges, moving towards the church in its deep nest.

Tamsin shivered and took his arm, turning him about and drawing him landward across the road. “Ugh, it’s getting cold. I’d better get home, Dominic. Come on, we’ve got ten minutes’ walking yet.”

George was still on the hotel terrace, smoking his last pipe and watching the sea.

“Hallo!” he said, hearing the unmistakable step of his son and heir moving up on him quietly from the garden. “How’d you make out?”

“Don’t be nosy,” said Dominic austerely, and came and sat down on the arm of the chair.

“Dad—”

“Hmmm?”

“Do you suppose,” asked Dominic very casually, “that there’s much smuggling in these parts nowadays?”

After a long and cautious silence George said weightily: “Now, look, I’m on holiday. I intend to remain that way. The local excisemen and police are quite capable of running their own show. And it’s no business of mine where Sam gets his brandy.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Dominic cheerfully. “So, quite unofficially, of course, what d’you make of this?” And he told him exactly what he had seen in the region of St. Nectan’s church, though not the precise circumstances in which he had come to see it.

“Going towards the church,” said George carefully. “And Tamsin took good care to remove you from the vicinity as soon as she realised what was going on. Yes, quite interesting.”

“Especially,” said Dominic, “since Simon made such a point of broadcasting in the bar exactly when he intended to open the Treverra vault. And then grinned at Sam, and invited him—”

“Or dared him?” suggested George.

“—to be present on the occasion. And the hint and the challenge were taken. On the spot.”

“Now I wonder just where the safe-deposit was?”

“I wonder, too. In the vault itself, do you think?”

“Now mind,” said George warningly, “not a word to anyone else. We’re only in this game by courtesy, if we’re in it at all. It’s the local man’s manor.”

Dominic rose from the arm of the chair, and stretched and yawned magnificently.

“What do you take me for?” he said scornfully, and strolled away to bed.