Death Came Softly

by E. C. R. Lorac

  Lockersley laughed. “The cave’s got him rattled, Keston. He’s dithering with funk.”

  Roland Keston’s didactic voice sounded more precise than ever when he answered; he had come up unseen through the woods, and now stood by the arched entrance.

  “One of the most interesting things about this place is the effect it has on those who visit it. No one contrives to be impartial, or to be unaffected by it. Some are frightened; some are serene. Some like it very much. Others loathe it unreasonably.”

  “What about you yourself?” inquired Rhodian.

  Keston laughed, a little snicker of a laugh. “I keep my feelings to myself,” he replied.

  He struck a match to light his cigarette as he spoke, and threw the match away while it was yet burning. It fell on a pile of leaves which lay against the rocky wall and ignited them. A trail of blue smoke rose up vertically for about three feet, and then turned and drifted out of the arched entrance. Lockersley watched it, fascinated, and then said:

  “Another odd thing about this cave is that it exaggerates enmities, Keston. You dislike me even more when we’re in here than you do habitually.”

  “Perhaps the atmosphere of the cave exaggerates the imaginative powers by inhibiting the rational,” replied Keston smoothly. “I suggest that before we all become completely irrational we go outside again.”

  Rhodian laughed, and the cheerful normal sound became fantastic on account of the echoes in the rocky chamber.

  “My God! This is a ghastly place,” he shouted, and strode out of the cave into the sunset glow of the woods.

  Keston stood still for a moment and peered at David Lockersley’s face; the greenish light had a curious effect; it seemed to steal the color from the men’s faces, making them pallid and corpse-like. Lockersley replied to the other’s stare with frowning intentness, though there was a mocking twist to his lips.

  “You do dislike me, don’t you, Keston? I’d never realized it quite so clearly before.”

  “You’re wrong, my dear fellow. I merely regard you as another odd human specimen to be observed and recorded,” replied Keston, his voice more pedantic than ever.

  Rhodian shouted to them from outside, “I say, you two, come out of that damned hole before you both go completely bats. It’s just one hell of a witch’s hole.”

  “Wrong again,” said Lockersley as he came out into the vivid evening light. “It’s just another odd specimen to be observed and recorded.”

  “It’s made me thirsty,” said Rhodian with a grin, “and I’m not wasting much time before I get outside one of the best.”

  Lockersley turned toward the drive with him, leaving Keston still standing at the entrance to the hermit’s cave.

  * * *

  “Well, Mr. Carter, I won’t say no, seeing you’re so kind.”

  Brady and Carter, who contrived to get through the lion’s share of the housecleaning at Valehead, were given to foregathering at the end of the day to enjoy a peaceful drink after their respective wives had retired to bed. Carter, who knew a good drink when he met one, had already learned to appreciate the excellence of Devonshire draught cider. He had a barrel of it down in the cool cellars below the vast stone-flagged kitchens, and he had drawn off a couple of quarts in readiness for Brady’s expected visit. Carter was a big, jovial fellow nearing sixty, with a considerable capacity for hard work allied to a liking for creature comforts. He sat now in a large Windsor chair, his feet on a stool, his jacket off, his collar comfortably loosened. Brady, a diminutive figure in contrast with the portly Carter, sat on the kitchen table and swung his feet comfortably to and fro as he addressed himself to the fresh draught of cider.

  “This is a rum go, this is,” said Carter cheerfully. “I been in some queer jobs in me time, but this one takes the biscuit. Not that this here place hasn’t a lot to be said for it, times being as they is, and the missis fair scared of blitzes and whatnots, but we’re a rum lot when all’s said and done, no offense meant.”

  “Being English, it’s not to be expected differently,” twinkled Brady, and Carter chuckled.

  “Now, then, none o’ that, Patsy. English we are, thank God, but some of ’em’s Irish in a manner of speaking. There’s the professor, so learned he’s plain crackers, and that there Mr. Keston of yours, enough to give a man the creeps. It’s a funny thing, Brady. That chap’s going dippy over our madam, if you ever heard of such a liberty.”

  “Well, well. So it’s noticing things ye’ve been,” replied the small Irishman. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but you’re slow to see what’s plain under your nose. Any more you’ve been noticing?”

  “Umps. Well. Seems to me there’s a lot of tender feeling about,” said Carter. “This bloke Lockersley, a poet I’m told he is, he’s taken with Mrs. Merrion too. Not that I’d mention such an idea to anyone else. Women is rare gossips. My old girl, she’d talk till the cows come home if I let her have her head. You and me, now, that’s different. No ’arm in our having a bit of a nice chat. You know, I think it’s the place. Something rum about the place.”

  “It’s a grand place,” said Brady. “Never seen a place I liked better. And what if our Mr. Keston is fallin’ head over ears in love with your madam, why not? Do him good, maybe. Make a man of him. He’s young, as men go. Must he spend all his best days studying dry skeletons?”

  Carter chuckled over his cider. “I wouldn’t say that. No use for bones and suchlike, meself, but it’s a bit rum. Three of ’em, on my soul, your Keston, and that balmy bit of a poet, and that fine young chap Rhodian, all glaring at each other along of our madam—and she never realizing it, bless her. Like a child, she is. Not like that fine lady, her sister. Got eyes in her head, she has.”

  “And it’s not liking her that I am,” said Brady. “She’s a hard-faced thing, and grasping. Not like her sister. She’s one to make trouble, I said to Mrs. Brady. You can see it with half an eye.”

  “That’s what I call exaggerating,” protested Carter. “You’ve hardly seen her. My missis says she’s a proper lady, meaning her kit’s all posh, if you take me. Hark! What’s that? Footsteps outside.”

  Brady cocked his head and listened. “That’s Mr. Keston. He’s a rare one to go wandering round at night.”

  “They’d give me the proper creeps, your pair, no offense meant,” said Carter. “Call ’emselves Christians? You never know where you are with ’em. What with the professor spending his nights in that there hermit’s cave, and Keston wandering around like a heathen Chinee when he ought to be in his bed, it’s enough to make a bloke like me tired.”

  “You see, they don’t call themselves Christians,” replied Brady, his eyes twinkling. “They think your heathen Chinee is as near right as the holy father himself. Holy Mary! Wise men can be uncommon foolish—but the professor, he’s a good man—and come to think of it, ye’re all heretics, and he no worse than yourself for that matter.”

  Carter chuckled, quite unoffended. “Me, heretic? I was brought up Primitive Baptist if that’s what you mean. Look here, Brady, when does your professor come back?”

  “The day after tomorrow, being Thursday. Why?”

  “It’s like this. He may be a queer old bird—he is, too, by gum, but I reckon he’s got a bit of horse sense. Brady, I don’t like the way that Keston looks at Mrs. Merrion. It’s a liberty for a chap like him to look at her like he does. And there’s this to it: Mrs. Merrion, she’s got a tidy little fortune now she’s a widow, and I bet Keston knows it.”

  “No. You’re misjudging him there,” replied Brady. “There’s one thing Mr. Keston doesn’t care about, and that’s money.”

  “All the same, I shall be glad to see the professor back to keep Keston to his job,” rejoined Carter, draining his glass and then indulging in a vast yawn.

  Brady laughed to himself. “And it’s a grand imagination you’ve got,” he said. “Don’t you go worrying about things, Mr. Carter. There’s no cause. I’ll bid you good night, thanking you for a real good
glass.”

  “Good night to you, Brady, good night—and don’t you go telling your missis what I’ve been saying now. Never set women’s tongues wagging, because you never know where they’ll stop.”

  “Not like their husbands,” chuckled the Irishman.

  * * *

  “So we shall be rearranging our plans for today, Mrs. Carter.” Eve Merrion was talking over the day’s orders with Mrs. Carter as she always did, talking in the pleasant, friendly voice which everybody liked. “I’ve had a phone message from the professor that he will be back home tonight, instead of tomorrow, and I want him to dine with us, as Mrs. Stamford is here. Mr. Rhodian has to go back to town for a couple of days, unfortunately, but he will be returning later in the week. Mr. Lockersley wants to go for a long tramp over the moor today, so I thought that Mrs. Stamford and I would take a picnic lunch in the car and drive a few miles into the woods. We can’t go far, because we haven’t the gasoline, but we can get far enough to see the view down to the coast, and it’s such a heavenly day it seems a pity not to take my sister out.”

  “Very good, madam. I will cut some sandwiches for you and pack the picnic basket. There will be four for dinner this evening?”

  “No. Five. The professor and Mr. Keston, Mr. Lockersley and Mrs. Stamford and myself.”

  “Very good, madam. Duck and green peas and gooseberry tart—and I’ve scalded some cream for you, the cows are doing that well.”

  “Goodness, how lovely! Though I feel guilty over having so many good things. Isn’t it glorious being here, Mrs. Carter? I can’t bear to think of living in a town again, ever.”

  “There’s certainly a lot to be said for the country these days, madam,” replied Mrs. Carter, and her tone made Eve laugh.

  “You’re a real Londoner, aren’t you?” she said as she turned away.

  Half an hour later Eve and her sister got into the small car which Carter had brought around to the front door, and Roland Keston came around the corner of the house to wave to them. Eve called to him, her foot on the clutch, and he came running up as she said, “We shall be back for tea, and Father will be back about six. Remember we’re all dining together this evening.”

  “Thank you very much,” he said, standing by the running board, looking rather wistfully down at Eve, while Emmeline Stamford watched him with half veiled amusement in her eyes. She had been quick to see Keston’s feeling for her sister.

  “Are you sure those brakes are properly adjusted now?” he asked anxiously. “They were slipping the other day, and the gradients hereabouts are very steep.”

  “The brakes are all right, thanks; Carter saw to them, and he’s an excellent mechanic,” replied Eve.

  Emmeline called, laughing, to Keston:

  “Are you anticipating tragedies? Cassandra-wise? Do you have premonitions of ill?”

  There was no answering smile on Keston’s face as he replied, “I do, sometimes, and the results aren’t generally amusing.”

  “Really, Mr. Keston, you ought to know better than to cast gloom over a perfect day!” protested Eve. “I hope you’re not going to stay indoors all day and work. Why not follow our example and laze in the sun? You work too hard.”

  “Indeed I don’t, and I am going to play truant today,” he replied. “I shall walk up to the Long Barrows on the moor. It is very beautiful up there.”

  “Perhaps you’ll meet Mr. Lockersley, and you can meditate together over bones and funerary urns,” laughed Mrs. Stamford as she waved good-bye and Eve started the car off.

  “That wasn’t really fair, Emma,” protested Eve. “Those two don’t like one another so awfully well, you know.”

  “What a marvel of understatement, darling,” said Mrs. Stamford. “They hate one another like poison, and it’s plain for all to see.”

  * * *

  Eve said some time afterward that that cool, flippant remark of Mrs. Stamford’s concerning Keston and Lockersley hating one another was the first shadow which cast its gloom over the radiance of Valehead. Throughout the sunlit morning, as they sat at the edge of the beech woods and saw the rich Devon landscape stretching out to the sea, Eve was conscious of a lack of ease; talk as she did, gaily enough, discussing old times and old friends, at the back of her mind was an unhappy feeling about the two men. She was almost glad when a mist came rolling in from the sea, obscuring the hot sun which had been such a delight, and she said that they had better get home again quickly, as the sea mists sometimes became unexpectedly thick and chill. They ran the car down to the valley again and found the weather clear, but cool and gray. On the slopes of the moor to the north a cloud cap had settled, thick and white. Tea time passed, and an hour afterward Keston came in; he came straight to Eve in the great drawing room, where she had had a log fire lighted lest her sister felt the chill of the cool evening, and asked if Lockersley were back. Eve shook her head.

  “No. I wish he were back. It looks thick out on the moor.”

  “It is. Very thick. Had I known my way less well I should have missed the path. I’m afraid Lockersley may be held up. It’s very confusing up there in a mist like this.”

  “Oh, dear. Why did he go? Is there anything we can do?” Eve asked.

  Keston shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’d go out and look for him willingly, but it would be futile in this sort of weather. I did shout once or twice, lest he were within earshot.”

  “You didn’t see him, then?” asked Mrs. Stamford.

  Keston stared at her question.

  “See him? Of course not. I should have told you had I done so.”

  There was a moment’s awkward pause, and then Keston added, “I don’t think you need worry at all. There is no danger for an experienced walker in being lost in a mist at this time of year. It is simply a matter of being delayed or losing one’s direction. It’s quite possible to take a path which will lead one miles away from one’s intended destination.”

  “Poor Mr. Lockersley! He will miss the duck and green peas,” said Emmeline. “That’s the car, Eve . . . who is it? Oh, it’s Father. He’s got here all right, anyway.”

  Dinner was not a very happy meal. The absence of David Lockersley troubled Eve a lot, though the professor and Keston strove to reassure her that there was nothing to worry about in the fact that he was delayed.

  “He’s probably settled down comfortably in a sheltered corner under one of the tors and made himself a fire from heather roots,” said the professor. “If the young man has any sense he will know that a mist at this time of year is a matter of short duration. It will probably be clear again by midnight, and there is a moon to help him on his way.”

  Emmeline turned the conversation away from Lockersley by getting her father to expound his theories about the various inhabitants whose activities he had traced in the valley and on the moor. Men of the stone age, Romans, early Britons and medieval charcoal burners interested her very little, and while she listened she watched Keston with rather cynical amusement. At the best of times he was not an easy talker, but he tried to distract Eve’s mind by talking earnestly to her about her plans for the garden. It seemed slightly comic to Emmeline that this earnest, academic creature should be thus attracted by Eve’s warm vitality and motherly instinct.

  Dinner passed, and the professor and Keston returned to their own quarters. Emmeline went to bed early, but Eve sat on over the fire. At eleven o’clock the professor came in again, saying that the wind had changed and the mist cleared away, and that Keston had gone out again to search for Lockersley. Carter, it transpired, had a good idea which direction Lockersley had meant to follow in his walk to Maldon Tor, and Keston, who thought nothing of walking thirty to thirty-five miles a day, had gone out to make certain that Lockersley had had no mishap in attempting to climb the famous tor.

  “Very foolish of him,” said the professor, referring to Keston. “Even if the young man had got himself into difficulties, which I doubt, it will be impossible to find him before dawn.”

 
“I wish Mr. Keston hadn’t gone,” said Eve unhappily, and the professor chuckled.

  “He did it to please you, my dear. He thought that it might be a consolation to you that somebody was trying to do something.”

  “The situation is not devoid of humor,” said Eve dryly. “Can you imagine Lockersley’s feelings if he’s rescued by Keston?”

  4

  It was not until the small hours that Eve fell asleep, and the sun was shining brilliantly in at her window when she was awakened by Mrs. Carter with a tray of tea.

  “It’s all right, ma’am. Both gentlemen have come back safe,” she said reassuringly.

  “Oh, thank goodness! I’ve been dreaming horrors all night,” said Eve.

  She got up and bathed and dressed, rejoicing in the perfect morning, and ran downstairs into the sunlit hall, where the double doors stood open to the sweetness of the morning. Keston was just coming in, a gaunt, unlovely figure in an old Burberry, and Eve had time to wonder why he was using the front door instead of the entrance which he and the professor usually used, before she saw his face, pallid and drawn in the strong morning light.

  “Whatever is the matter?” she cried, consternation at his haggard look overcoming all other thoughts. “You’ve been doing too much, you’re exhausted.”

  He sat down heavily, shaking his head.

  “No. I’m all right. I’m sorry, Mrs. Merrion, terribly sorry. I’ve bad news for you.”

  “But Mrs. Carter said he’d come back—David Lockersley, I mean.”

  “Lockersley? Oh, yes, I’d forgotten about him. It’s the professor. He wasn’t in his room and I went down to the cave. He was there. He must have—his heart must have—” He stuttered painfully, and then with an effort controlled himself again. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Merrion. He must have died in his sleep. I wanted to break it to you gently, but . . . I was very fond of him, and finding him was a shock.”