The Counsellor Page 7

  “You’re sure of your facts?” demanded The Counsellor.

  “Dead sure,” retorted Standish. “I’ve won bets on it often with argumentative Englishmen who’ve never heard of Lord Brougham’s Act.”

  “Of course one of them may have made a false declaration about the residence qualification,” The Counsellor suggested.

  “What good would that do? It wouldn’t make it a legal marriage,” Standish objected.

  “Yes, but the girl might imagine that it was legal,” Sandra Rainham put in.

  “In which case Mr. Querrin would be a wrong ’un. Agreed,” commented The Counsellor.

  He pulled a jotting-pad towards him and made a note or two before continuing.

  “Now let’s ask a question or two. First, did she or did she not go off by pre-arrangement with Querrin? Second, why did they choose obscure hotels when better ones were to be found near at hand? And, third, the various incidents reported by some of our esteemed correspondents. Now, my dear Watsons, the meeting’s open to hear your views on these points.”

  “Of course the thing must have been pre-arranged between her and this American,” Standish said positively. “We know that she was corresponding with him. Probably that last letter she got from him was posted just before he left America and brought her the news that he was following it in the next liner. Most likely he turned up, unknown to the rest of the Longstoke House crew, and settled details with her. One meeting would do the trick. She took her cheque book with her. No one takes a cheque book to a tennis party. She knew she might need it in future. One can draw cheques in America even if one’s bank is in England. And, finally, Querrin had two suitcases in the car with his initials on them. I can’t imagine a young chap making a habit of taking a suitcase in each hand on all his walks abroad, even for exercise. Therefore, if he started out with these suitcases, he must have been waiting for the girl at some pre-arranged rendezvous. On the other hand, if he bought the suitcases and an outfit en route, after the girl picked him up, I’ll bet he wouldn’t have bothered to get his initials put on the cases. I know I shouldn’t, if I’d been in his shoes.”

  “Let’s keep to facts,” begged The Counsellor. “What we really know is that Querrin and the girl were corresponding, which might mean no more than that they were friendly. As to the chequebook, all I told you was that it wasn’t to be found in the place where she usually kept it. She may have shoved it into a drawer in her bedroom, for all I can tell. I’ll admit that you may be right about the initials on his suitcases.”

  “Men do seem to prefer the long way round,” Sandra commented in a faintly sardonic tone. “All this talk about chequebooks, and U.S.A. letters, and suitcases! Any woman would tell you that you can get your question answered if you find out one fact. Did she take her tennis things with her? If she did, then she meant to go to the tennis party and she must have changed her mind on the spur of the moment. If she didn’t, then she never intended to go near the tennis party, and she must have made other arrangements before she left Longstoke House. Simple, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but we don’t know whether she took them or not,” objected Standish. “All Whitgift saw was the old attaché case in the car.”

  Sandra threw up her hands in a pretty gesture of mock despair.

  “Is there anything to hinder you from finding out?” she asked in a blasé tone. “Get the housekeeper to go through her things and see if a pair of tennis shorts is missing. She’s bound to know how many the girl had. Washing-lists are a great help.”

  “Something in that,” The Counsellor admitted, making a jotting in his pocket-book. “And now, the second point: Why did they choose small hotels to stay at, when they were within easy distance of superior accommodation replete with hot-and-cold, lifts, lock-up garages, etc.?”

  “Because they were hard up, obviously,” Standish declared contemptuously. “Anyone could tell you that.”

  “No,” said The Counsellor firmly.

  “Because they were on a sort of honeymoon trip and preferred quiet places,” Sandra suggested. “Some people are built that way.”

  “No,” said The Counsellor again, with more emphasis.

  He took out his cigarette-case and pushed it across the desk to each of the others. When the three cigarettes were lighted, he tapped on the desk to emphasise what he had to say.

  “They weren’t hard up, Wolf. I told you that Whitgift said the girl could easily lay her hands on enough money to finance herself for a month or so away from home. That meant she had it in current account. And behind that she had capital. Querrin must have had some money, too. They weren’t hard up. Not to the extent of saving five bob on a night’s lodging, anyhow. And your notion won’t work either, Sandra, as you’ll see in a moment or two.”

  “Well, then,” Sandra countered, “perhaps the girl hadn’t the clothes with her for evening in a big hotel.”

  “No good,” said The Counsellor. “If you arrive in a car you can dress as you please at any hotel on the road. Besides, if it was a pre-arranged stunt, she could have got Querrin to pack an evening frock in one of his suitcases. Turn to the third point: the incidents on the road that we’ve heard of.”

  “Well, what are they?” asked Sandra.

  The Counsellor leaned back in his chair and ticked them off on his fingers as he produced them.

  “First, they bought some petrol at St. Neots and the man found afterwards that they’d palmed a bad note on him. I lay no stress on that. Even the best of us gets landed with a bad note sometimes, and might pass it on quite innocently. You remember last week a gentleman “CHEATED” asked what he could do about it, in a similar case. By the way, did he send his note for our museum? I suggested it in my reply to him, I remember.”

  “Oh, yes,” Standish assured him. “It’s framed and hung up in the Chamber of Horrors.”

  “Then take the next incident,” The Counsellor went on, brushing aside Standish’s further remarks. “At Baldersby Gate, they ran over a dog. To me, that’s highly significant. In fact, that old lady’s letter seems to contain the kernel of the whole affair. The next affair was at Temple Sowerby. They chose to stop at a pub that isn’t on the A.A. list. Economy? And yet they ordered the best bottle in the place, and grumbled because it wasn’t good enough, grumbled hard enough to impress themselves firmly on the waiter’s mind. And the night before, they’d chosen a temperance shop deliberately, when they could have got wine at another hotel in the place. What did they do at that T.T. place? The girl made friends with the landlady and thus stamped herself on the good dame’s memory.”

  “Well, but, to judge from that landlady’s letter, she was a nice old thing. And Helen Treverton was a taking-looking girl, from your description of her photograph. I don’t see anything amiss in her chatting to the dame,” Sandra objected.

  “No more do I,” said The Counsellor. “I’m just suggesting that it may have been done-a-purpose. Now we can pass the Gretna Green episode and get on to the final scene. They meet an A.A. patrol and stop him. And Querrin’s arm is now in a sling, though so far as we know there was nothing wrong with him at Gretna, thirty miles or so back. What had happened to him in the meanwhile? What strikes me is that a man with an arm in a sling is just the sort of thing that one would notice, especially when the arm-in-a-sling is given as the reason for stopping the patrol.”

  “Well, what did happen to Querrin’s arm?” demanded Standish.

  “Nothing at all, I’ll bet,” said The Counsellor decidedly. “To my mind, the whole of these episodes had one object and one object only: to blaze the trail of car No. EZ 1113. And what’s more, I’ll bet that there were quite a lot of other incidents happened on that drive up the Great North Road which would be equally striking, only we haven’t heard about them. Why do you find them going to small hotels instead of big ones? Because in a big hotel a guest is just one of a bunch; whereas in a small place he’s an individual one can remember. It all hangs together, Wolf, if you’ve the eye to see it.”
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  “And when you’ve seen it, what do you see?” asked Standish sarcastically.

  “A damned queer affair,” said The Counsellor.

  “It’s so queer that I’m going into it with both feet to see what I can kick up.”

  “Well, if I ever elope, preserve me from having you dashing in on top of it,” said Standish, feelingly.

  “Elope!” echoed The Counsellor with scorn. “The girl was her own mistress, as her uncle said. No one was trying to keep her from marrying Querrin, if she wanted to. Why all this secrecy, then? And all this on-the-spur-of-the-moment business. And a ‘marriage’ that isn’t legal even by the liberal rules of your native land, Wolf. And where’s car No. EZ 1113 gone finally? If those two are off to America by the Anchor Line, they must have mislaid it somewhere. The whole thing is a tissue of misfits. Can’t you see that?”

  “Well, take care that you don’t come out a bigger fool than in you went, as Omar Khayyam said,” warned Standish. “The odds look to me about 100 to 1 that you will. What do you propose as a first step towards paranoia?”

  “Take my plane north at once. Saves time. There’s an aerodrome at Carlisle. After that, we’ll hire a car and go on by road.”

  “We?” queried Standish.

  “I’m taking you,” explained The Counsellor. “You speak the language. I never could burr my r’s properly for Scots to understand me. We’re going now. Get a move on.”

  Chapter Five

  Lochar Moss

  THE flight to the North did nothing to improve Standish’s temper or reconcile him to what he regarded as a wholly futile expedition.

  “‘Ay, now you are in Arden; the more fool you. When you were at home you were in a better place,’” he misquoted with some acerbity as they left the Carlisle aerodrome after seeing the plane into a hangar.

  “‘But travellers must be content,’” continued The Counsellor. “Shakespeare, isn’t it? The fellow who thought Delphi was an island and that Bohemia had a seaboard? Don’t trust him on the subject of foreign travel, Wolf. But since you don’t like this place, we’ll try another as soon as we can hire a car.”

  The Counsellor had come well provided with money, and they had little difficulty in procuring a car at one of the garages of the town. A heavy deposit secured the absence of a chauffeur.

  “I don’t want anyone to have a nervous breakdown through wondering what we’re up to,” The Counsellor explained as he drove over the Eden and took the road to Gretna. “We’re better alone.”

  Standish made no comment on this, and nothing further was said until they reached Gretna Green. The Counsellor had passed that way before, and drove straight to the Old Blacksmith’s Shop, a long low whitewashed building bearing an A.A. plaque and, underneath, an inscription intimating that this was the Marriage Room. A notice-board at one end of the edifice indicated the location of a Free Car Park.

  “You park the car and have a stroll round, Wolf, while I invade this lair of Hymen,” suggested The Counsellor.

  Standish had not long to wait. In a short time The Counsellor returned.

  “Quite a good sixpennyworth,” he declared, as he stepped into the car again. “Historic coach, as used by Queen Adelaide; the famous old blacksmith’s anvil over which marriages were and still are performed”; likewise a specimen of the old penny-farthing bicycle. Also one or two Repentance Stools, which may come in handy for those who marry in haste . . . A sinister touch, that. And a set of registers, which interested me most of all. I bought a series of picture postcards, too, for Sandra’s benefit. It’ll please her to know I thought of her.”

  “Did you get any information?” inquired Standish drily.

  “The complete book of words. I took a copy. And here’s the wording of the certificate, on one of these post-cards. Here you are! ‘Howard Querrin from the Parish of Govan in the County of Glasgow, and Helen Treverton from the Parish of Grendon St. Giles, etc. being now both here present, and having declared to me that they are Single Persons, have now been married after the manner of the Laws of Scotland: As witness our hands at the Old Blacksmith’s Shop, Gretna, this ninth day of September, 1938.’ And then follow the signatures of the ‘Parties’, the Witnesses, and the Priest. So that’s that.”

  “So Querrin made a false declaration about his residence, and the marriage is void under Lord Brougham’s Act,” Standish commented. “It’s hard lines on the girl, if any doubts happen to arise. Did you make any inquiries about them?”

  “They seem to have regarded it as a bit of a joke,” The Counsellor reported. “The man kept his face straight, but the girl giggled once or twice during the ceremony, which apparently is not a prolonged one.”

  “Nerves, possibly,” Standish suggested.

  “You think so? There it was, anyhow. And now, I think, we’ll follow the trail further. They took the Dumfries Road.”

  At first the road was almost level, but after Annan they began to climb to rather higher ground. At the top of the ascent, rather to Standish’s surprise, The Counsellor pulled up the car and turned in his seat to examine the view.

  “What’s the point in stopping?”

  “Just to look about me,” The Counsellor explained. “I stayed hereabouts for a week or two on holiday when I was a cub. It’s interesting to see it again.”

  Standish looked about him.

  “What’s that pocket Sahara down yonder?” he demanded. “The Solway Sands?”

  “Yes,” confirmed The Counsellor. “And if ever you come here and take a fancy to walking by the shore, better keep your eye open. That Firth’s six miles wide at high tide, and only about a mile wide at the ebb. Incoming spring tides run up at eight or nine miles an hour with a roar you can hear miles away. Worth seeing. More like a flood than an ordinary tide. The sands are flat and get swallowed up at a devil of a rate. If you’re caught far out on them, you have to run like hell for safety and you may not make it before the water catches you up. A nasty place. And just to make it a bit more difficult, you may blunder into a quicksand. There are plenty of them about.”

  “What’s all this waste of heather and stuff below us?” inquired Standish.

  “Lochar Moss,” explained The Counsellor. “Just bog and heather most of the way from the coast to near Dumfries. I’ve been into it, looking for white heather. A god-forsaken tract. Dangerous, too, in the winter-time, some people told me. It’s a rum place. They find sea-sand a bit below ground-level, and embedded in that are trees with their heads all pointing one way. Tradition says there was a forest there originally. Then the sea broke in and tore up the trees, which accounts for their heads being all one way. Then the water retreated, and the Moss formed:

  ‘First a wood, and then a sea.

  Now a moss, and e’er will be.’

  So the country-folk say.”

  “It’s pretty big.”

  “Big enough to have different names for districts of it. Down there, by the sea, you’ve got Longbridge Moor. Below us here is Ironhirst Moss. Round to the right is Racks Moss, and beyond that is Craigs Moss. There’s another bit still further north. A nice dreary bit of work on the whole. One could murder a man out in it and unless he were missed by somebody and a search was made, he might lie there quite quietly for long enough. If you’ve seen enough, we’ll toddle along.”

  They passed through Dumfries and drove on through rather featureless country. At last The Counsellor, after a glance at his milometer, pulled up again.

  “It must have been hereabouts that the A.A. patrol came upon that car,” he decided. “This is the end of the trail, so far as information goes.”

  “Well, what’s your idea?” asked Standish. “Build a cairn to mark the spot, and then go home again? It seems all that’s left to do.”

  The Counsellor consulted the dash-board clock.

  “Stranraer’s the next stop, I think,” he determined. “We might get there for dinner, stay the night and make a few inquiries. No use stopping short in the last lap.”

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sp; Standish shrugged his shoulders resignedly.

  “Oh, just as you like,” he agreed with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

  “Then just dip into the A.A. Handbook—I put it in the cubby-hole in front of you—and see what hotels there are and especially what garages Stranraer boasts.”

  “Three two-star hotels and three garages,” reported Standish.

  “Oh, come,” declared The Counsellor, “that’ll be easy. I was afraid the place would be festering with them. We can do this on our heads. In fact, Wolf, I’m inclined to leave it entirely to you.”

  “Leave what?”

  “The necessary inquiries. I want to find car EZ 1113. The obvious thing is to ask about it at hotels and garages. You don’t feel an urge?”

  “I do not,” said Standish, decidedly.

  “Feeling torpid?” inquired The Counsellor anxiously. “A bit flat and sleepy? It’s the fresh air, probably. Well, then, I suppose I must do it myself.”

  But when they reached Stranraer and entered an hotel, The Counsellor had unexpected good luck. As he signed the visitors’ register, he cast his eye over the pages and found: “9th September, Mr. & Mrs. Howard Querrin” entered in a man’s writing.

  “Hello!” he exclaimed, with a good imitation of surprise for the benefit of the clerk. “Mr. and Mrs. Querrin? Are they still here, by any chance? They’re friends of mine. Here, Wolf, the Querrins landed here just ahead of us.”

  The clerk shook her head.

  “No, they’ve gone,” she explained. “They went off on the following day.”

  “Oh? Pity, that,” lamented The Counsellor. “Came in their car, I suppose?”

  Again the clerk shook her head.

  “No, I remember them coming. They just walked in shortly after ten o’clock with their suitcases. They didn’t garage a car, I’m quite sure of that.”

  “Mr. Querrin’s arm in a sling?” The Counsellor demanded.

  “No,” the clerk answered for the third time. “I remember him coming in with a suitcase in each hand and giving them to the porter.”