‘Seventeen?’ said Mr Campion, who was getting a remarkable mental picture of the two millers of Pontisbright. ‘Does this astonishing young woman live alone at the mill?’
‘No, no. There’s three on ’em. Three Fittons. There’s Miss Mary, the eldest; she’s twenty-three. Then comes Miss Amanda. Then there’s young Mr Hal. He’s only sixteen. He’d be a lord of the land if the law was what it ought to be. He’s a Pontisbright all right. You wait till you see him. Looks like the burning bush coming along; yes, yes, so he does now.’
Mr Campion had not time to enquire into this startling simile, for the landlord was still talking.
‘They’ve got a foreigner staying with them, a fine upstanding old lady. Miss Huntingforest, her name is. Got knocked down by a burglar yesterday.’ He became thoughtful for a moment and then turned to Campion with the expression of one who has had a vision. ‘Now I hev thought of something,’ he said. ‘If you gentlemen want to stay here you’d better get took on at the mill as paying guests. I reckon they’d be glad to have you. Scatty was talking to me about borrowing the paper to see if there was anybody advertising for a place.’
‘That wouldn’t be a bad idea at all,’ said Mr Campion. ‘In fact, that’d be a very good idea. But I thought we’d fixed up here?’
‘That’ll be all right,’ said Mr Bull vehemently. ‘Don’t you worry about that. Some people’d complain and make a fuss about being put out, but I wouldn’t. I ain’t and I shan’t. I don’t feel it and I shan’t say it. I’m honest, though I do say it myself.’
‘Quite,’ said Mr Campion foolishly. ‘Quite. You’re not very keen on visitors here at all, are you? I thought it was rather strange when we came in.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Bull, ‘strange it is, and I shouldn’t be an honest man if I didn’t admit that.’
They went on playing until long after closing time, legal and actual. Eager-Wright and Guffy retired, and Campion remained with the landlord alone in the big empty taproom. An oil lamp had been lighted, and the uncertain shadows it cast over the table gave the landlord such an advantage over his opponent that it evidently seemed to him a waste of good money to suggest finishing the play.
Mr Campion remained vague and foolish-looking, but the scared expression which had lingered in his host’s eyes earlier in the evening returned as the shadows deepened, and towards eleven o’clock, while they were still playing, Mrs Bull appeared in the doorway, a coat thrown over her nightgown. Her face was very pale, and when her husband stepped over to speak to her the indolent figure by the table caught a stifled sentence. The words were ordinary, but there was a thrill in the whisper in which they were uttered.
‘It’s out there again!’
Campion stepped over to the window, not wishing to eavesdrop, and, pulling back the short red curtain, looked out into one of the most perfect moonlit nights he had ever seen. The moon was nearly full and it streamed into the room like a flood-lamp. Outside it was so bright that colours were almost distinguishable.
Campion was standing there surveying the prospect when a quick step sounded behind him, and the next moment the curtain was jerked from his hand and thrust back into position across the window. He turned in polite surprise and caught sight of the landlord.
The man was very pale, his small eyes were starting and his lips quivering.
‘Don’t let that in here,’ he said huskily. ‘Don’t let that in here, whatever you do.’
He went into the bar and was pouring himself out a drink when Campion came in. The young man paused in the doorway, looking slight and ineffectual as ever.
‘Something funny going on?’ he enquired affably.
Mr Bull swallowed his drink before replying. Then he lowered his voice and said unsteadily: ‘The powers of darkness, sir, God help us!’
As he spoke he traced something with his forefinger in the dregs on the bar, hastily wiping it off with a cloth immediately afterwards. Campion had just time to catch sight of a cross surmounted by a little hooked sign before it vanished beneath the duster.
The young man went slowly upstairs to bed. He did not undress, but stood for a long time at the window of his bedroom, looking over the moonlit garden of the inn. Since his room was at the back of the house he could not see the heath. The garden ran some way up the hill down which they had come into the village. Everything looked very peaceful in the brilliant light, and the air was warm and flower-scented. It seemed incredible that anything should be seriously amiss in such a lovely valley, or that any terror could walk abroad to alarm such guileless souls as the good people of the inn.
Mr Campion was still standing motionless, his pale eyes thoughtful behind his spectacles, when the latch of his door clicked softly and he turned round just in time to see Lugg’s enormous bulk and great white face looming into the room.
Mr Campion surveyed him coldly. ‘Come for a night-light?’ he enquired at length.
‘’Ush,’ said Mr Lugg, holding up a warning hand. ‘’Ush. Something’s up. I ’aven’t ’alf seen something. My legs is shaking so I can ’ardly speak.’
Mr Campion went over to his side, treading softly on the creaking oak boards.
‘You’re getting a bit eccentric, Lugg,’ he murmured. ‘Heard any voices?’
Mr Lugg plumped himself squarely on the bed.
‘I’ve been out for a walk,’ he said. ‘I ’ad a touch of indigestion and I thought I’d walk it off. It seemed a nice night.’ He wiped his forehead and looked up at his master knowingly. ‘Thought I might get ’old of a bit of information about the place, and I ’ave. There’s something very queer going on around ’ere. I found a corpse to start with.’
‘A what?’ said Mr Campion, momentarily taken aback.
‘Corpse,’ said Lugg complacently. ‘I thought that’d make yer sit up. There it was lying out in the moonlight all wrapped up in a sheet. It give me a turn when I saw it. I emptied me flask at one go.’
‘Yes, well, what you want is a good rest,’ said Campion soothingly.
‘It’s lying out on the ’eath,’ Mr Lugg persisted. ‘Come and ’ave a look at it. Just the thing to make yer sleep. I was walking along, just as you might be, ’ands in me pockets, and whistling soft to meself, when I come to a great patch of gorse. I was going round it when I see a gleam of white in a clearing in the middle of it. The moon was very strong and it picked out everything nearly as clear as day. I worked round the gorse till I come to a little path, and then I saw the corpse. It was all wrapped up in a shroud, just the face showing. There was pennies on the eyes and the jaw was dropped. It was a man – old man by the look of ’im – and stiff as you like. I just ’ad one look at ’im and came back ’ere like bingo.’
Mr Campion removed his spectacles. ‘It sounds worth seeing,’ he said mildly. ‘Come on.’
They went quietly out of the inn, tiptoed across the cobbles and sighed with relief as their feet sank into the silencing turf of the heath.
‘It’s over there,’ said Lugg, pointing to a dark patch of gorse on the uninhabited side of the stretch. ‘Seems funny, don’t it? A corpse is one thing, but a laid-out corpse on a blasted ’eath is another. Something shockin’ about it.’
Campion was silent, but he quickened his pace and gradually the patch of furze came nearer. When they were within a few yards of the outside edge, a stray cloud passed over the moon and left them temporarily in shadow.
‘’Ere we are.’ Lugg’s voice was unusually husky. ‘This is the path.’
He plunged down a narrow track, sweeping aside the overhanging branches of prickly yellow flowers as he went. The moon came out from behind the cloud just as they entered the clearing, and the whole scene was once more lit brilliantly.
The clearing was empty, save for themselves.
Mr Campion turned to the speechless Lugg.
‘If we had a snare we might get a rabbit,’ he said conversationally.
‘I saw it,’ said Mr Lugg hysterically. ‘Look ’ere, you can see for yourself. This is where it was
lying.’
He pointed to a roughly made bed of dry bracken and hay in the centre of the clearing, where the moonlight fell uninterrupted.
Campion stepped forward and picked up something lying half hidden by the shadow under a gorse bush. It was a piece of linen about as big as a man’s pocket handkerchief. He shook it out gingerly and Lugg grunted.
Scrawled upon the cloth was the sign again, a cross with a cedilla at the top.
‘Well,’ said Mr Lugg, whose vocabulary had deserted him. ‘Well, I ask you!’
Mr Campion dropped the rag and wiped his long, pale fingers fastidiously with his handkerchief.
‘Don’t, my dear old bird,’ he said. ‘Don’t. I don’t know.’
CHAPTER V
The Miller
‘BUT YESTERDAY A king,’ remarked Mr Campion as he walked across the heath to the mill with Guffy and Eager-Wright the following morning. ‘To-day, a poor gentleman come about the trouble. There’s a natty line in cheap philosophy somewhere there.’
‘We drop the Hereditary Paladin business, then?’ said Eager-Wright, not without relief.
Campion nodded. ‘From now on,’ he said primly, ‘I get no more respect than my naturally superior intellect deserves.’
Guffy, who had not been listening to the conversation, but who had been surveying the scene with approval, turned. On the soil of his own county he was no longer the diffident, affable soul he had been on the Continent. Here he was a man of information.
‘What a pity they took down the old house,’ he said. ‘It must have been rather fine.’ He indicated a mound of parkland which rose out of a wooded stretch on their right. ‘Quite a nice little bit of shooting, still, I should say,’ he went on. ‘Not hunting country. That must be the rectory over there by the church, I suppose.’
The three young men glanced towards the slate roof of the modern house they had noticed from the car, and Eager-Wright uttered the general thought.
‘It may not be very easy to go prowling about in those woods,’ he said. ‘Still, I imagine we’ve got the place to ourselves. Widow’s Peak would hardly hang about after his colossal blunder in attacking Miss Huntingforest, or whatever her name is.’
Guffy, who was becoming more of the fine old country gentleman at every step, beamed.
‘Now we’re actually here,’ he said, ‘I feel that no beastly London magnate with his dirty little crooks can put up much of a show against us.’
Eager-Wright grinned, but Mr Campion remained impassive.
‘I don’t know whether it’s occurred to you,’ he said diffidently, ‘that our big business friend, Savanake, is employing Widow’s Peak and Sniffy Edwards at the moment because he’s at the disadvantage of having led a more or less upright life for the past year or two. Any moment now it may occur to him to get hold of something rather better class in the crook line. That’s why we’ve got to hurry. You know: haste is essential. The early birds get the worm. First reasonable offer will conclude deal. You all know how I got the V.C. at Rorke’s Drift, but in spite of my well-known intrepidity, which you all admire so much, I should be glad to get the Mother’s Union prizes safely under lock and key before Savanake undertakes the job himself. Hullo, here we are.’
They had left the heath now and turned down the narrow lane to the mill. Here, spread out before them, was the real rustic loveliness of Suffolk at its best. In spite of the industry of Miss Amanda and her assistant it was evident that the mill did little business, for the track was grass-grown and culminated in a rough patch of green which sloped gently down to a white-flecked race. The mill itself, a great white wood and brick building, sprawled across the stream into the meadow on the opposite bank, and beside it stood the house.
If there had been any doubt that the millers of Pontisbright had once been prosperous folk, it must have been instantly dispelled. The house was a nearly perfect example of late fifteenth-century architecture. Its wattle-and-daub walls were plastered over and ornamented with fine mouldings. Big diamond-pattern casement windows bulged beneath rust-red tiles, and the whole rambling place suggested somehow the trim blowsiness of a Spanish galleon.
The charm of the place was increased by faded chintz curtains billowing through the open windows, and the gleam of polished wood from within. Even a remarkably complex wireless aerial festooned across the roof had a rustic and archaic look.
There was one startling anachronism, however. Drawn up before the door was an extremely ancient but unmistakable electric brougham. This remarkable vehicle had been painted crimson by an inexpert hand, and now sat, squat and self-conscious, blushing violently for its own age.
As they came nearer they saw that the original upholstery, long since defunct, had been replaced by the same variety of faded chintz that adorned the house.
Guffy stared at the apparition in respectful astonishment.
‘That looks like the thing the guv’nor paid a man in Ipswich ten quid to take away, the year of the war,’ he said. ‘What an extraordinary thing!’ He paused and looked about him dubiously. ‘I say, there’s rather a lot of us,’ he ventured. ‘Suppose you two go and make the arrangements? I’ll wait for you.’
‘Grand old man seized with social funk,’ said Eager-Wright. ‘Come on, Campion.’
From the moment they approached the front door, an air of faintly hilarious unreality descended upon the whole proceedings. As soon as Eager-Wright knocked the door was swung open with suspicious celerity by a person who was easily recognizable from the landlord’s description as Scatty Williams.
The man really was amazingly like a duck. His head was very bald and very white, but his face was a yellowish tan. There was a ring just above his ears which showed quite clearly where his hatband finished, and his face and neck were exposed to the elements. Two little bright blue eyes almost hidden by shaggy grey eyebrows were set close together beside the narrow bridge of an enormous nose, which splayed out at the tip so very like a duck’s bill that one almost expected him to quack. To add to the incongruousness of his appearance he was wearing a white dress waistcoat of ancient cut which had been fitted with white sleeves, so that it faintly resembled a cocktail jacket. For the rest, however, he was arrayed in corduroy trousers, enormous boots and a very bright blue shirt without a collar.
He beamed at the visitors, and it dawned upon them that he was one of those people whose natural qualities unconsciously exaggerate every emotion they may happen to feel. His smile of welcome was transformed, therefore, into a horrific grin of pure joy.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said before they could speak, and then, pulling himself together, he added with a gravity which was as portentous as his delight had been vivid: ‘You’ll be the gentlemen who were thinkin’ o’ staying here? What name shall I tell the lady?’
Eager-Wright shot an enquiring glance at his companion.
‘Mr Wright and Mr Campion,’ said the pale young man firmly.
Their guide, mumbling the names over to himself so that he should not forget them, led the visitors over a sweet-smelling, stone-flagged hall into a low, very dimly-lit room in which dark masses of furniture loomed indistinctly.
The room really was absurdly dark. Eager-Wright stumbled over a chair as soon as he entered and regained his feet with a muttered apology, to find himself looking down at someone who had come forward to meet him with outstretched hand.
‘Hullo,’ said a clear, unexpectedly vibrant female voice. ‘I mean, how do you do? I’m Amanda Fitton. The house is extremely old and very picturesque. There are remarkable fac – fac – well, advantages for bathing, boating, fishing, walking, and – er – motoring.’
There was a pause for breath and a clatter as Campion kicked a side table in his attempt to step up beside his companion.
‘Perhaps you saw the car outside?’ continued the voice with a barely concealed note of pride in its tone.
‘The food is good,’ she hurried on. ‘Home-cooked and – er – liberal. If you are delicate the water is very good h
ere. You can have as much milk and butter and eggs as you can eat.’
As the visitors made no sound, if the laboured breathing of Eager-Wright could be discounted, the voice continued, this time with a hint of desperation in its depths:
‘There is rough-shooting in the autumn and, no doubt, golf on the heath. The food is good,’ she repeated rather lamely, ‘and would five guineas be too much? There are three of you, aren’t there? Three and a man?’
‘Five guineas each?’ enquired Eager-Wright.
‘Oh, no! Five guineas altogether. Or we could make it pounds. We can take you for as long as you like, and the beds are good.’
There was a pause and the voice became unexpectedly wheedling.
‘You will come, won’t you? We’ve got electric light in some of the rooms, and the mill doesn’t make much noise, really, and Scatty and I – I mean Williams – can work it when you’re out.’
‘That sounds very fine,’ said Mr Campion’s vague, idiotic voice out of the dusk. ‘Let me give you our recommendations. We’re all house-trained, to start with. Good-tempered and, except for Lugg, remarkably well-mannered. We dislike hot and cold water, modern improvements, inside sanitation, central heating, and expensive wall-paper. My friend here – Mr Wright – who appears to have fallen over something else, is engaged on a book about rural Suffolk, while I am partly assisting him and partly on holiday. Lugg is very useful about the house, and we had intended to pay three guineas a week each. Do you think we shall suit you?’
Once again there was silence in the gloom and then the voice remarked unexpectedly: ‘Do you mind shabby furniture? Tears in things, I mean.’
‘Nothing, in my opinion,’ said Mr Campion firmly, ‘gives a house more old-world charm than tears in furniture.’
‘Oh, well,’ said the voice, ‘in that case let’s have a little light on things. Stand by while I pull up the blinds.’
They heard her moving cautiously across the room and then, with a great rattle of rings, the curtains were thrown back, and what had once been a pleasantly furnished room came into sight.
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