British Murder Mysteries: J. S. Fletcher Edition (40+ Titles in One Volume). J. S. Fletcher

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ XIII

       Table of Contents

      Whoever, strange to the district, had come upon Taffendale's Limepits in the darkness of the night, might well have been excused if for the moment he had fancied himself dreaming of the bivouac which follows a long day's battle, when camp-fires are lighted, and spirals of smoke-stained flame wind upwards to a silent sky. Taffendale's Limepits were out of the world; there was a high-road within a mile and a half of them and an occupation road which communicated with it; there was also a railway near at hand, but the railway only touched the pits by a deep-sunk siding; the occupation road was equally sunk between high banks and thick hedgerows; the Limepits, unlike Taffendale's farm, which stood high on the uplands above, were hidden and unsuspected until you came to where the air, whether of a spring morning or a winter night, was always sharp with the acrid pungency of the burning lime. You perceived that pungency in your nostrils before you came to Taffendale's; however strong the scent of the new-mown hay in the adjacent meadows might be, however fragrant the freshness of the new-blown roses in the hedge, the clear, keen smell of the lime was paramount. Yet you saw nothing of this place until it suddenly showed itself at your feet; then you found yourself confronting a great, wide-spread cavity in the surface of the land; a sort of waterless lake sunk deep down beneath the level of the fields and woods, and all around its seamed and scarred sides the masses of limestone which men had forced out with pick or explosive, and in its midst conical heaps of the stone, built up symmetrically, like great beehives, with a bright fire glowing and crackling at the base of each, and from the apex a curling shaft of blue-grey smoke winding, day and night, while the lime burned, into the upper air.

      This was Taffendale's Limepits—a little world in itself. To look more closely into its geography was to see that it had two hemispheres, like the greater world on whose surface it made so minute a speck. Men had delved and dug and scratched and burrowed into this quarry for so many generations that one-half of it had become exhausted; the womb once so generous in gift could give no more. And in that half Nature had asserted herself in her usual fashion. The scarred sides had become covered over with shrub and plant and flower; the burnt-out kilns had been transformed into mounds and knolls, whereon silver daisies and golden buttercups made stars in the grass; the uneven floor of the quarry was no longer a wilderness of stone and rubble, but luxuriant enough of rye grass and clover to afford cropping-ground for a donkey here and a goat there. And here, in rudely-fashioned, one-storeyed cottages, built out of the stone, the lime-burners lived. This worn-out, fully-worked scar, now given over to green things, was the barracks of the tiny army which ceaselessly tore wider and deeper scars into the unworked land beyond.

      In the eyes of the folk who lived round about them in the neighbouring villages Taffendale's lime-burners were a strange lot. They were a people within a people. They kept themselves almost exclusively to themselves. There were not very many of them: some seven or eight families in all. As a rule they married amongst themselves; if a young lime-burner brought in a wife from outside she was a long time on approbation; whenever a young woman went away to service, or married one of the village lads (an unusual circumstance, seeing that villagers and lime-burners were always at variance), she left Taffendale's for ever. Now and then the men visited one or other of the inns and ale-houses in the district, or repaired to the market-town; on these occasions they went in a gang—no lime-burner was ever known to go on such an expedition by himself. And if they were aroused by villager or townsman at such times, they were more than quick to fight—and then it was ill work for the men who were adventurous enough to stand up to them. They were big, brawny, great-boned fellows, half-savage, wholly careless, good-looking in a devil-may-care fashion, and their isolated lives bound them as closely together as the ties of blood which were already theirs. And their women were of the same sort—fine, strapping, Amazon-like creatures, who had a wild beauty of their own, and were not unconscious of it, but were much prouder of the strength that enabled them, if it were necessary, to take a place alongside their men-folk with pick and shovel, or to wheel heavily-weighted barrows up the long planks which led to the newly-building kilns.

      On the morning following Justice's visit to Badger's Hollow, Taffendale was standing on the edge of the quarry, watching his men build a new kiln. He was in something of a dour mood; the entanglements with Rhoda Perris, into which he had fallen with a species of ease and inevitableness for which he could not account, was beginning to assume a certain seriousness which he did not care to face. On the previous evening Rhoda had told him that she could not understand Perris's conduct during the past two or three days. He had gone about his work in silence; eaten his meals in silence; had behaved as if he were indifferent to her comings and goings; once or twice she had caught him looking at her as if he were thinking or speculating about her. That afternoon he had gone into the market-town to sell his new wheat; he had not returned home when she set out in the evening to meet Taffendale. And she was vaguely suspicious that there was something wrong, she said; maybe Perris had heard something; maybe it was unsafe for them to meet. For the first time she had been afraid of the woods, dark and quiet and lonely though they were, and her sense of unseen trouble had communicated itself to Taffendale. He had gone home uneasy and dissatisfied, and had passed a restless night, and now as he stood looking down at his lime-burners, building the new kiln layer by layer, he was wishing in his mind that Perris's wife had never come near him for help, and more than all that he had never walked home with her on that warm spring night which had found her so excited and emotional and susceptible. He saw now how easily Fate, or Destiny, or mere Chance had changed the direction of three lives.

      As Taffendale stood there, gloomily ruminating on these matters and wondering how they could be put right, he heard a heavy step behind him, and looking round saw Justice coming in his direction, his slouched hat set at a rakish angle, his gun resting in the crook of his arm, his hands thrust negligently in the pockets of his cord breeches. Taffendale turned his head away after the first sharp glance, and then walked a few yards further along the edge of the quarry, as if to put some distance between himself and the gamekeeper. He had no liking for Justice; he regarded him as a lazy fellow who traded on the fact that he served an absentee master; he fancied him to be sly and designing and a busybody, and he never exchanged more than a nod with him. He was not pleased to see Justice about his property, but there was a right-of-way across the land at the lip of the quarry, and he could not object to his taking it. At the same time he knew of no obligation upon him to take any notice of the gamekeeper, and he walked slowly along, watching the operations beneath until he was some distance from the path. Then, to his astonishment, he found that Justice had left the path and was following him. Taffendale turned sharply, and stared at the intruder in cold surprise. Justice saw the coldness and the surprise, and smiled, as he took one hand out of his pocket and touched the brim of his slouched hat with a gesture which somehow insinuated a lack of respect.

      "Good-morning, Mr. Taffendale," he said, with an attempt at ease which Taffendale inwardly cursed for his familiarity. "A fine autumn morning, sir."

      "Good-morning," answered Taffendale. He had faced Justice by that time, and he continued to regard him with disfavour. "Do you want to speak to me?" he asked.

      Justice smiled again, and taking out his pipe from an inner pocket of his velveteen coat, made a show of lighting it. Taffendale, keenly observant, noticed that his hands trembled a little.

      "Well, that's the truth, I did, sir," replied Justice, with an assumption of frankness. "That's what I stepped across for, Mr. Taffendale."

      "Well?" said Taffendale.

      Justice threw away the match and blew out a cloud of 'smoke. He watched it float upward as if its gyrations were of vast interest.

      "That's a queer business about this man Webster, Mr. Taffendale," he said suddenly.

      Taffendale, who had again turned to the quarry, glanced sharply round. He had found Justice eyeing him narrowly.

      "What about Webster?" he said.

СКАЧАТЬ