The Mortover Grange Affair/Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
MORTOVER GRANGE
Wedgwood took a good look at this venerable survival of a past age before he approached nearer. As a countryman born and bred he had some knowledge of old houses, and he knew that in this he saw one that had lasted for many and many a generation: had he possessed more technical knowledge of such things he would have been able to fix an approximate date for its buildings, for over the entrance a Tudor rose and a portcullis, the badge of Henry VII, denoted that it had been erected at some date between the years 1485 and 1509. There was more heraldic carving about the front, and that and the timbered walls, quaint chimneys, and whitewashed gables made a picture against the dark hillside at the back. An eerie place, thought the detective—the sort of house in which there were, no doubt, secret hiding-places; passages, the whereabouts of which was only known to the family; dark rooms and recesses the very atmosphere of which would suggest mystery and romance. And there was an air of gloom and silence about the whole place; not a sign of life was to be seen around it, not a face at its windows. But from one of the fantastically-shaped chimneys a thin wisp of blue smoke curled into the heavy October air.
As he stood there watching, Wedgwood summarized what he knew of the family that inhabited this ancient house. Not much—and that only gained by hearsay; the gossip of the previous evening. Mortover—that was the name. Had been there for hundreds of years. Owned land that had been unproductive. Poor—miserably poor, if Appleyard and his companion were to be credited. The present owner was Philip, who was to be rich because coal had been discovered under his dank acres. And he still—according to Appleyard—was a young man of no great account, and likely to be no more than a figure-head on the directorate of the colliery. That was about all.
But . . . what about this girl in London; this Avice Mortover in whom John Wraypoole had taken some interest and had made some discovery, and who had come to him, Wedgwood, with her story? In what relation did she stand to this Mortover of Mortover Grange? What had John Wraypoole discovered about her and about that relationship—if any—when he was down in these parts? And what was there in that manuscript which John Wraypoole had brought to Miss Tandy, the cover of which bore one word—Mortover?
"Nice assortment of things to find out!" mused Wedgwood. "However—here, surely, is the place to start work at. And one may as well begin."
He wanted to enter Mortover Grange; to see and have speech with its inhabitants, in particular with its owner, the Philip Mortover whose name had appeared in so many newspapers the day before. And he was thankful that he had a good and plausible excuse for knocking at the door. Wedgwood had a hobby; he spent much of his spare time in sketching and had he been able to give more attention to it would have done well as an artist. In a deep inside pocket of his overcoat he carried a sketching-block and a case of pencils, and smiling at the thought of their present usefulness he made his way along a neglected carriage-road to the front of Mortover Grange, and stepping into the darkness of a stone porch knocked at a door which looked as if it were rarely opened.
It was a long time before any response was made to the detective's summons. He had knocked three times and was thinking of trying another entrance when he heard the sound of obviously rusty bolts being drawn on the other side of the iron-studded panels. The door creaked, groaned, as if it were a live thing in pain; then it swung slowly back, and he saw standing on the threshold of a cavernous entrance hall a girl who, from her general appearance and attire, was no country maiden but a smart young lady from London. She was a tall, pretty girl, probably eighteen or nineteen years of age, very much out of harmony with her surroundings, and she stared wide-eyed at the detective as if he had fallen from the clouds. But she spoke before he could.
"They never open this door!" she said, smiling. "I just happened to hear———"
"Sorry to give so much trouble," Wedgwood hastened to say. "Is the master at home?"
The girl retreated into the hall, and at the foot of a wide staircase raised her voice.
"Aunt Janet!" she called. "Aunt Janet! Come down—here's a gentleman———"
Before she could say more a woman came into view, emerging from an open doorway half-way up the stair. She was a tall, gaunt woman, full of angles; elderly, and probably grey-haired, but of her hair Wedgwood, keenly observant of her as of everything about him, could see nothing; for her head, from just above the level of her eyebrows to the nape of her neck was tied up tightly in a bright yellow and red handkerchief, pirate-fashion. The face beneath it was as remarkable as the unusual headgear—a sharp-featured, dark-hued, much-wrinkled face, with innumerable lines about a pair of thin lips and another pair of blear, watchful eyes, black as sloes and curiously lambent. A strange woman this, thought the detective; probably as odd in character as in appearance: he watched her still more narrowly as she came towards him along the stone-flagged hall. And he saw that she was watching him as observantly as he was watching her, and that watchfulness, mingled largely with suspicion, was as a second nature to her.
"What is it?" she asked in a hard, emotionless tone. "What might you be wanting? If it's anything about the colliery———"
"No, no, ma'am!" broke in Wedgwood hurriedly. "Sorry to give you so much trouble! I was just walking this way, on pleasure, and I thought I'd like to make a drawing of this fine, old house—I'm a bit of an artist, you see," he went on with a laugh, as he drew his sketchbook from his pocket and opened it at a page on which was a nearly-completed sketch. "Not often one comes across such a house as this, you know!"
The woman made no immediate reply; she was still watching him, and the suspicion in her dark, glowing eyes was increased.
"Why, I don't know," she said, coldly. "Seems a queer time of the year to come a-pleasuring—nasty, damp weather like this—and as to making pictures of the house, I don't know how the master would be for that, I'm sure. Who might you be, and where do you come from—we're not favourable to strangers hereabouts."
Before Wedgwood could make any retort to these inhospitable remarks, a young man, carelessly dressed in rough country garments, untidy and unshaven, and with his hands thrust in the pockets of his riding breeches, came out of a door close by, and lounged forward. He was an oaf in appearance, thought Wedgwood, and he was not surprised to hear a voice as surly in accent as the lips from which it came were sullen and stupid in appearance.
"What's afoot?" asked the young man, staring furtively at the stranger. "What's he want, Janet?"
"Nay, some make of foolishness!" replied the woman, drawing aside. "Picture-making, or something soft—it caps me how folk can find time for such games—I can't, anyways!"
She retreated down the hall again, and Wedgwood turned to the young man who stood lumpishly watching him.
"Merely your permission, sir, to make a sketch or two of your lovely old house if you've no objection," said the detective. "I could have drawn it from the road outside, but I wished to be polite."
The young man laughed—the laugh of a man who scorns what he has no understanding of.
"Oh, you can draw the place if you like—no objection!" he answered, churlishly. "Do you want to come in?"
"Thank you, sir, no!" answered Wedgwood.
"I'll select a favourable point from your courtyard. Many thanks to you."
He lifted his hat to the girl, who during the conversation had lingered at the door, and re-crossing the cobble-paved yard selected a suitable angle from which to make his sketch, and perching himself on a low wall began to work. The door closed again; he heard bolts drawn and keys turned. But at the end of half an hour when he had completed an outline of walls and gables, the girl suddenly rounded a corner of the house and, shyly smiling, came up to him.
"May I look?" she asked. "I like pictures."
"Certainly—but there's not much of a picture so far," answered Wedgwood. "I'm only making a rough sketch, you know. Do you draw!"
"No!" she said with a decisive shake of the head. "I've never gone in for that. I can play the piano, though—that's what I go in for. I wish they'd a piano here—I was disappointed when I found they hadn't—I've never been in a house without a piano before."
"You don't live here, then?" asked Wedgwood, going on with his sketching. "This isn't your home?"
"Me—live here? No—I live in London—Tooting Common. My word, no—I shouldn't like to live here. Miles away from anywhere! I'd no idea it was such a lonely place. No—I just came on a visit—came back with my aunt for a few days after she'd been stopping with us at Tooting. She thought it would do me good—country air and all that. But I don't know—I think London air's as good as this, any day!"
"I daresay!" agreed Wedgwood. "Fine air down Tooting Common way—used to live that side myself once. That your aunt I saw just now?"
"Aunt Janet, yes, Mrs. Clagne, her name is. Mr. Mortover's housekeeper. That was Mr. Mortover you saw, too. He's just going to buy a motor-car. A lot of money's coming to him now, because of the coal-mine, and I think he's going to re-furnish the house. And my—it wants it! It is a queer place inside! I never saw such a place. I should think there's nothing in it that wasn't made in the year one!"
Wedgwood saw that this young lady was of the sort that loves talk, and that he had only to smile and nod acquiescence to encourage her.
"Old-fashioned, eh?" he suggested.
"Old-fashioned! I should think so! Tumbling to pieces, I call it. But Aunt Janet's going to Manchester in a day or two—I'm going with her—and the whole place is going to be seen to by a firm of furnishing people there, and she's going to persuade Mr. Mortover to do everything properly—new furniture and new carpets and everything, and to have papering and painting done, so that it'll look like a gentleman's house. It's mouldy enough now, isn't it?"
"Bit out of repair, certainly," agreed Wedgwood. "Perhaps you'll persuade Mr. Mortover to buy a piano."
"Oh, well, I don't think he's musical," said the girl. "I've never heard of it—he never does anything but go out with his gun now and then on those moors. Still, while he's at it I think he might have a piano, don't you?"
"Oh, I should certainly have a piano, if I were re-furnishing," said Wedgwood. "Oh, to be sure! Perhaps you'll be stopping here a while—you could play to him."
The girl gave him a look out of her eye-corners and began to pick bits of moss out of the wall against which they were standing.
"Oh, well," she answered ingenuously. "My aunt Janet, she wants me to marry Mr. Mortover. But I don't know. To be sure, I haven't got anybody at home; at least nobody serious. But I'm not sure that I should like living here—it's out of everything!"
"A piano and a motor-car would make a difference," remarked Wedgwood, archly. "They'd be a bit of compensation. But perhaps you're not in a hurry to change your name, eh?"
"Well, I don't know—I suppose one's got to, some time. There's three of us at home, besides me—we've all got to do something—pa's job in the City isn't such a grand one, and ma's always saying that us girls must do what we can for ourselves. I suppose—you said you used to live our way—I suppose you don't know pa?"
"Can't say that I do," replied Wedgwood. He held his sketch at arm's length, with his head on one side, studying the effect. "Might you know. What's his name?"
"Patello—Mr. Thomas Patello," replied the girl. "He's in the sugar-broking in Mincing Lane———"
Before Wedgwood could reply that he hadn't the pleasure of Mr. Thomas Patello's acquaintance, a latticed window was opened in the front of the house, and the red and yellow handkerchiefed head of Janet Clagne thrust itself out.
"Mattie!" cried the housekeeper. "Come here—come at once—what're you doing, idling there, and all those fowls waiting to be fed?"
The girl made a grimace and hurried off; the red and yellow disappeared from the window. During the rest of the time that Wedgwood took to finish his sketch he saw no more of Mattie Patello, nor of young Mortover. But as he went away, glancing back at the house, he espied Janet Clagne watching him from a side-door; she was still watching when he turned the corner towards Netherwell. The detective was full of thought, surmise, speculation, tangled theories as he went back to the town. His prospecting of Mortover Grange had not been fruitless; he had learned things; he had seen young Philip Mortover: he had discovered his weird housekeeper. And from the lips of the artless Mattie Patello he had learned that Janet Clagne wanted to marry her pennliness niece to her master, who was now likely to be a very wealthy man; he had learned, too, that Janet Clagne had quite recently returned from a visit to London. Had all these things anything to do with the affair that he had in hand? Perhaps—but it needed a good deal of further work and disentanglement of hard knots before he could see exactly how. Also, Wedgwood had come to a point at which he wanted local help—that fact sent him, as soon as he had dined that evening, and when darkness had fallen, to the private house of the local superintendent of police.