The Tale of Castle Cottage Page 14

  “No, please, Miss Harmsworth,” Will said, rather to Beatrix’s surprise. “Actually, you’re the reason for my call. Captain Woodcock wanted me to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. About something you saw next door.”

  This answered Beatrix’s unspoken question about why Will was here. He must be part of the investigation that the justice of the peace and the constable were conducting into Mr. Adcock’s death. Although why he should be involved, she couldn’t quite make out.

  The four of them sat around the small table, which was spread with a blue checked cloth and centered with a jelly jar filled with daisies. Gilly poured tea and passed around a plate of chocolate biscuits. “I s’pose you want to know about the man I saw in the garden this morning,” she said.

  Will nodded. “Do you remember what time that was, Miss Harmsworth?”

  “About six thirty,” Gilly said. “A little while after the baby was born. But I’m afraid I didn’t see him very well, Mr. Heelis. Not his face, that is. He had on a hat—a brown hat with a wide brim. And brown trousers, I think.”

  “How tall?”

  She hesitated. “Medium height, I suppose.”

  “Bearded? A moustache?”

  She shook her head, then paused. “At least, I don’t think so. I really couldn’t see his face. There wasn’t much light, and his hat was pulled down.”

  “Did he go into the shed?”

  “If he did, I didn’t see him. I couldn’t linger, you know. The baby had just come, and I had things to do. And anyway, it didn’t seem important. He was just someone walking through the garden.” She glanced at Jeremy, frowning. “I thought . . . didn’t you say that Mr. Adcock killed himself, Jeremy?”

  “That’s certainly what it looked like to me,” Jeremy replied in a low voice. He pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen anything like that. I don’t want to see anything like it ever again.”

  “The cause of death has yet to be determined,” Will said quietly, and Beatrix caught her breath, hearing the implications of his short sentence. There was something more here than she had thought.

  Jeremy caught it, too. He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “This man Gilly saw—you think he might have had something to do with it, Mr. Heelis?”

  “That’s not clear just yet,” Will replied. “We simply don’t know.” He turned back to Gilly. “Miss Harmsworth, I wonder—do you know a Mr. Bernard Biddle? He is a building contractor.”

  “I’ve heard his name mentioned,” Gilly replied thoughtfully. “He did some building work for Major Kittredge last year, at one of the estate farms. If you’re asking me whether he was the man in the garden, I’m afraid I couldn’t say. I’ve never laid eyes on him.” She lifted her head alertly. “I think I hear the baby crying. If you don’t have any more questions, Mr. Heelis—”

  “No,” Will said quickly. “Thank you. But if you remember anything else—anything at all—be sure and let Captain Woodcock or Constable Braithwaite know at once, will you?”

  Gilly nodded, smiled at Beatrix, and left the room. A few moments later, Beatrix and Will took leave of Jeremy and left, too. They paused at the gate.

  “I must apologize for my abruptness earlier this afternoon,” Will said a little stiffly. He scanned Beatrix’s face, looking for reassurance. “Is it . . . Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right,” she said with a small smile. “I just wish things didn’t have to be so complicated. And I’m very sorry for Mrs. Adcock. I must stop in and tell her so.” She hesitated. “But I really do have to speak to Mr. Biddle about one or two important things, and I’d rather not do it alone. I wish you would come with me. Will you?”

  “No,” he said, and then added, rather more urgently than the question seemed to call for. “And I don’t want you seeing him, either, Bea. Not until I can go with you. Please. Promise me.”

  She frowned, wondering why he was so positively negative. “Is this because of what happened to Mr. Adcock?”

  “No—at least, I don’t think so. It’s . . . It’s as you say, Beatrix. It’s complicated.” At that moment, the constable and Captain Woodcock came around the Adcock cottage, and Will took a step away. “I’m sorry. I have to go now. Don’t forget about dinner this evening with the Woodcocks. I’ll see you at seven.”

  With that, he was gone.

  And Beatrix had not promised.

  12

  The Secret Life of Bertram Potter

  My news is all gardening at present, & supplies. I went to see an old lady at Windermere, & impudently took a large basket & trowel with me. She had the most untidy overgrown garden I ever saw. I got nice things in handfuls without any shame, amongst others a bundle of lavender slips . . . Mrs. Satterthwaite says stolen plants always grow, I stole some “honesty” yesterday, it was put to be burnt in a heap of garden refuse! I have had something out of nearly every garden in the village.

  —Beatrix Potter to Millie Warne, 1906

  Beatrix dropped in at the Adcocks’ cottage to pay her respects to the widow. But Vicar and Mrs. Sackett were already there, and just about the time she arrived, Bertha Stubbs knocked on the door, clearly itching to know what had happened. So Beatrix said what she had come to say (and meant from her heart) and didn’t linger. Mrs. Adcock would have all she could do to cope with Bertha Stubbs, who was the worst gossip in either Sawrey.

  Back at Hill Top, Beatrix tried to settle down to work at the project she had left when Sarah Barwick knocked at the door, some hours before. She sat down and looked at the table in front of her, sighing. It was littered with galley proofs, her drawing supplies, and the last pen-and-ink illustrations for Pigling Bland, to be pasted into the galley. She was hoping to get the drawings completed as soon as possible, so she could post the finished package to Harold Warne. His most recent letter had been rather urgent, because the catalog had announced the book for October, so that children could have it for their Christmas.

  But now that she looked at what was yet to be done, Beatrix wasn’t sure that she could meet the deadline. It seemed that something was always getting in the way. Her father’s illness, her mother’s constant demands for attention, the need to run back and forth from Hill Top to Lindeth Howe, where her parents were spending the holidays. Not to mention the constant delays in the work at Castle Cottage, where she and Will had once dreamed of living out their lives together.

  And in her lowest, darkest moments, that dream seemed utterly impossible. She now felt that it would be kinder to release both of them from it: Will, so that he could get on with the rest of his life; herself, so she could stop being pulled between two impossible poles. It was bad enough when she had been torn between her parents and her books and her farm, all competing for her full attention, her consideration, her devotion. Now, it was her parents, her books, her farms (for there was more than one)—and Will Heelis. There simply was not enough of her to go around, especially with this book deadline hanging over her head like an ominous cloud.

  Beatrix put her elbows on the table and covered her eyes with her hands, feeling unspeakably weary. How many books was it, now? It was hard to keep track. Twenty-one or twenty-two, depending on whether she counted that first private printing of Peter Rabbit twelve years ago. She had spent a full year sending the manuscript out to one publisher after another and getting back nothing but curt rejections, until she had got so impatient and out of temper with the process that she had taken matters into her own hands and published the book herself. To everyone’s surprise, it had sold over four hundred copies. And then Norman Warne had read it and liked it and had urged his brothers to publish it. And the rest—as her brother Bertram liked to say, with a slightly envious smile—was literary history. Everyone, and most especially Beatrix, had been astonished by the public’s apparently insatiable eagerness for bunny books.

  Beatrix rubbed her smarting eyes with her fists. Well, literary history or not, she was dreadfully behind with this particular project—and the
way she was feeling, she was glad she hadn’t yet proposed another one. Perhaps it really was time to stop. In some ways, she hated the idea, but in other ways it seemed incredibly liberating. Yes. Yes, indeed. This book ought to be the last—especially given the problem of getting paid for her work.

  While Norman was alive, there had never been any financial difficulties. Her royalties were always paid promptly and in an orderly way. But after his death, the accounting system at Warne seemed to have broken down. The payments had become increasingly erratic, and the royalty statements that accompanied the cheques were either incorrect or incomplete. She frequently had to send them back with questions that were almost never adequately answered.

  The situation seemed to be getting worse, too—to the point where she had started keeping track of what was owed her. In fact, she was going to have to write a letter in the next day or two, asking about some money that was owed her. She hated to think it, but she was beginning to feel that she couldn’t trust Harold Warne—Norman’s brother, and now her editor. Something was going on there. What, she had no idea, but it was making her very uncomfortable, to the point where she sometimes found it difficult to do her work.

  She dropped her hands and blinked until her vision cleared. Even though she had rushed the drawings, she felt they were good. She picked up the painting of the two little pigs, Pigling and his lady-friend Pig-wig, standing beside the grocer’s cart, which she had drawn from a photograph of Mr. Preston and his horse Blackie, who came round three times a week to deliver the village wives’ orders. But the suspicious grocer was laying a trap for the pigs, and the two little friends were lucky to escape with their lives.

  And escape they did. It was the perfect ending to a getaway story, the dream of a child’s life. Boys and girls—especially the ones who dreamed about escaping from restrictive parents and starched collars and nursery puddings—ought to like it very much.

  Beatrix looked for a moment at the last drawing, which she had just started to sketch. The two little runaway pigs, Pig-wig released from her imprisonment, were finally free, dancing ecstatically to a tune played by a trio of rabbits whilst the sun set over a lake.

  She chuckled sadly. It wasn’t just little children who dreamed of getting away from their parents and from all the rules and restrictions that kept them from doing what they most wanted to do. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she and Will could simply clasp hands and run away? They would be free at last, and together. Together, forever and ever. They could dance to their own lovely tune, and nobody else’s.

  But she knew better, of course. Running away and living happily ever after was a fairy story. Her little book was a fanciful tale about pigs, written for little children. She and Will were grownups with obligations. Running away wasn’t an option. Not now, not ever.

  There was a hard, bitter lump in her throat. After a moment, she pushed back her chair, put on her garden gloves and her wide-brimmed straw hat, and went out to the garden. If she was too disheartened to work with her paintbrush, she could work with her trowel. Perhaps an hour’s weeding in the sunshine and clear air would relieve her mind so that she could get back to the book.

  Outside, she took a deep breath, looking around, finding pleasure in the untidy tumble of flowers, herbs, and vegetables. Unkempt and unattended, the garden hadn’t amounted to much when Beatrix bought Hill Top, but she had worked on it over the seasons, turning it into a lovely, informal cottage garden. She had hired quarrymen to build flagstone walks and stone walls between the garden and the Tower Bank Arms (her next-door neighbor). The wall nearest the house sheltered a wooden beehive, and another was a “warm wall”—a westfacing wall of stone and brick along which she had planted a grape vine. She’d only got three bunches of grapes (the climate was really too cold, this far north), but the kitchen garden provided vegetables and herbs, the apple orchard yielded plenty of apples, and flowers bloomed everywhere.

  As for plants, they had come from many generous people: a bundle of lavender slips and some violets from an old lady on the other side of the lake, some saxifrage and moss roses from Mrs. Taylor at the corner cottage, phlox from a man who lived on the road to the ferry, and honesty from the village rubbish heap—as well as lilacs, rhododendrons, and fuchsia from a plant nursery in Windermere, and black currants and gooseberries and strawberries. She loved them all dearly, every plant, each one. If ever she and Will had a garden at Castle Cottage, she thought, she would divide many of these wonderful plants and move them there, or take seeds and plant them. If ever, if ever—

  With a bitter ache of longing in her throat, Beatrix pushed the thought away. Really, there was no point in planning a garden at Castle Cottage or even in wishing for one. If the house could somehow be magically finished and ready for someone to live in it, she’d have to find a new tenant. As long as her mother and father had their way, there would be no wedding. No wedding, and no garden. Viciously, she shoved a trowel into the earth and began to dig.

  A half hour later, Beatrix was leaning over the lettuces, tugging on a stubborn weed, when she heard footsteps behind her. “Hullo, Bea,” a man’s voice said, and she straightened and turned, thinking for an instant that it might be Will.

  But it wasn’t. A slender, handsome man with a thin dark moustache stood at the garden gate. A little taller than she, he was dressed in a neat dark suit and vest, a red tie, and a tweed cap. He pulled the cap off his dark hair and held it in his hands, giving her his usual charming smile.

  “How is my favorite sister?”

  “Bertram!” Beatrix exclaimed happily. “Why, what a wonderful surprise! I had no idea you were coming. Have you been at Lindeth Howe with Mama and Papa?”

  Her brother gave an exasperated chuckle. “For the past three days. I wanted to come over and see you yesterday, but the parents kept finding things they wanted me to do, or subjects they thought we should talk about. You know how they are.” He glanced at the weeds she held in one hand. “I’m interrupting your work.”

  “No matter,” Beatrix said with a warm smile, dropping the plants onto the pile beside the path. “Weeds can wait. I’m delighted to see you. Let’s go put the kettle on, and I’ll make tea.” She stripped off her gloves, thinking that she hadn’t seen Bertram since the Christmas holidays in London. And he hadn’t been here at Hill Top for over a year. She was very glad that he had come.

  “First this,” Bertram said, and unexpectedly folded her in his arms.

  She leaned against him for a moment, enjoying the strength of his embrace. Their mother and father had never been fond of “demonstrations,” as Mrs. Potter called them. They preferred cool handshakes and restrained formal greetings. They almost never indulged in a warm hug—in fact, they rarely even touched. And Beatrix and Bertram had lived apart for years, Bertram at his little farm in the south of Scotland, Beatrix with their parents in South Kensington. They shared some important interests in common, but they rarely saw one another and their lives were very different. Beatrix often felt as if she barely knew her brother.

  But Bertram is not a minor character in our story. In fact, while I don’t yet know all the details, or exactly what is likely to happen, I understand that he is going to play a very large—and completely unexpected—role in the course of future events. I think we shall have to get better acquainted with him, so we won’t be completely taken by surprise by the way things turn out in the end.

  Beatrix was six years old when her baby brother was born, and she had always looked out for him. This was especially important for both of them, because these two very Victorian children did not see as much of their mother as modern children do. In fact, if the Potters were like other families in their social class, the children saw their parents for an hour at teatime and another brief while at bedtime, and that was all.

  But Beatrix and Bertram had each other. They lived in the same third-floor nursery, were cared for by the same nursemaid and nanny, and had their lessons in the same schoolroom from the same governess, Miss Hammon
d. As privileged upper-class children living in London, they didn’t go outside to play, the way country village children did, and they had no playmates or friends.

  But their lives were never boring—oh, no! Beatrix’s journal from her growing-up years is full of visits to the British Museum (where she was fascinated by a fine collection of illuminated manuscripts), the Kew Gardens, and all the many London art galleries, where she saw exhibits of the best painters, as well as the classics. In Oxford, she went to the Bodeleian. On the way to Edinburgh, she saw the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. They visited Brighton, Edinburgh, Manchester, Falmouth, Portsmouth, Torquay, Wales, and the Lakes, as well as a great many other places.

  And every August, when the London streets began to sizzle, the Potters packed up their children, the butler, the cook, the maids, the governess, the coachman, the coach, and the horses and went on holiday until October. In those early years, they went to Dalguise House in Perthshire, in the Scottish Highlands. There, the children could roam through what seemed like enchanted woodlands along the River Tay, identifying wild birds and searching out their nests, catching rabbits and hedgehogs and voles and bats to take back to London to live in the nursery with them, and sketching birds and animals and trees. They studied everything from leaves to lizards and sketched and painted and drew all that they saw. And as it turned out, they both had an unusual gift for drawing.

  For children of their social class, art was a hobby to be encouraged, but Beatrix and Bertram seemed never to have thought of their art as a hobby. Both of them took their art seriously, and both became serious professional artists. As an adult, Bertram painted large landscapes of dark and rather gloomy wildernesses topped by dark skies and tinged with a decidedly Romantic melancholy. (When you visit Hill Top Farm, you will see several of Bertram’s paintings, framed in gilt and hanging in the upstairs rooms.) Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to interest buyers in his art.