The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I hope you are not trying to alarm me.”

  “No, of course not. It was just a thought. I suppose we ought to be getting back. Dame Beatrice, I would love to confide in you, but I can’t.”

  Temple Wood, when they reached it on the return journey, was a stone circle which had probably formed the boundary of a large cairn, for inside the circle was a cist grave and there were spiral markings at the base of a large stone on the northern side of the ring. The site was at the side of a minor road which separated it from Nether Largie south cairn and there was an adjacent area of woodland from which the ring took its name.

  In spite of what she had said, Clarissa showed no sign of wanting to inspect the separate stones of the circle, and she and Dame Beatrice were soon on their way back to the cars.

  “By the way,” said Laura that evening, after she and Dame Beatrice had exchanged news and views, and Laura had given Stewart an account of the circles on Machrie Moor. “I did mention that the Shadowy Third bobbed up in conversation while we were on Arran, didn’t I? There is no doubt Sister Veronica is a bit troubled. I believe she thinks it’s an apparition.”

  “Well, from what rumours I have heard, neither Sister Veronica nor Miss Starr seems eager to mention the possible sex of our incubus, so an apparition it may be, of course.”

  “Good Lord, I hope not! I find these stone circles and tombs and cairns quite disturbing enough, without being stalked by a ghostly presence as well, and so I told Veronica and Capella.”

  “Some are born to see ghosts, others achieve ghosts—i.e., through fraudulent spirit mediums—while the rest, as personified by you and me, among others, have ghosts thrust upon them, as I believe I have pointed out before.”

  “If there is a ghost,” said Laura uneasily, “it followed your party, not ours. I suppose nobody said anything about it to you?”

  “Oh, yes. Clarissa brought up the subject. For reasons which seemed to me inadequate, at a fairly early point in the proceedings Professor Owen left the two of us to continue the inspection of the tombs and so forth without his expert guidance. When we were alone, Clarissa brought up the subject of our visitant. We were on our way to a cairn you would have liked. It had axe-heads carved on the end stone of the cist and we saw other cavernous graves, too. Clarissa boldly made her way into one of them.”

  “I’m dashed if I would have done that. A bit frightening, wasn’t it? But what did she have to say about our unbidden guest?”

  “Nothing much, except to ask me whether I had seen it. I gathered that she had not.”

  “It’s a bit peculiar, you know, that the only people who claim to have spotted it are young Capella, who’s definitely superstitious, and Sister Veronica, who isn’t. What about myself, who am as superstitious as a deep-sea fisherman and bear the unenviable burden of wondering whether I possess the Gift? If there is anything to see, why haven’t I seen it?”

  “Because you are non-suggestible. But none of you had any uncomfortable experiences on Arran, you said.”

  “No, although Machrie Moor is wild enough and desolate enough to give rise to all sorts of fancies. To change the subject, was my guess right? Did Clarissa mention the Truth Game?”

  “Yes, she did. I was able to reassure her, but I would like, after dinner, to hear a transcription of your shorthand version of everybody’s answers.”

  “Rather fun. I suppose you’re going to do a further sorting out of sheep and goats. I wonder whether Lionel and Clarissa have kissed and made friends yet?”

  “I have my doubts. The conflict, I think, may take time to resolve itself.”

  “It will be a good thing when they do bury the hatchet, especially Lionel. A disgruntled driver is a dangerous driver. Anyway, two of your party seem to have got on pretty well together.”

  “Yes, indeed. On the way home Miss Catherine elected to share the back seat of the car with Mr. Stewart. I was in front: It seemed to me that Miss Catherine was in playful mood.”

  “Catherine? In playful mood? How do you mean?”

  “They skirmished and scuffled together.”

  “Good Lord! How embarrassing of them!”

  “She also tweaked his hair, I think, and on one occasion gave him a slap on the wrist.”

  “It sounds as though the Argyll air really is like wine. What did you have to drink at lunch?”

  “Orange squash.”

  “Then it must have been the Argyll air. How are we going to sneak away this evening to go over those sets of answers?”

  “We shall continue to play the Truth Game by telling the others what we are going to do, and by promising to declare the prizewinner before bedtime. We shall not mention that the answers are shorthand copies unless there seems reason to do so.”

  CHAPTER 7

  TRUE OR FALSE

  “The truth I’ll tell to thee, Janet;

  Ae word I winna lee.”

  Border Ballad—Tam Lin

  “So we await the Judgement of Paris,” said Owen in the manner of Ivy Compton Burnett. “When is the great announcement to be made?”

  “As soon as I have looked through my notes again,” Dame Beatrice replied.

  “Oh, you went to the trouble of making notes, did you? I am flattered and surprised that you have given up so much of your time to judging my simple little competition.”

  “What is the prize?” asked Capella.

  “A book token. I decided I could not go wrong with that. It caters for all ages and for both sexes.”

  “And does more good to the book trade than anything else which has ever been thought of,” said Catherine.

  “Oh, of course, like Raymond Parsloe Devine, you are a rising young novelist,” said Stewart.

  “Your reference escapes me, you silly boy.”

  “He rose a foot and half when a golf-ball missed him by inches. But you were saying?”

  “Oh, that wild horses wouldn’t persuade most English people into a bookshop to buy books with their own money, but a book token can be exchanged for nothing else but books.”

  “And people do give other people book tokens,” said Laura, “because it’s so convenient. You pop the card into an envelope, stick a stamp on, shove it in the post-box and there you are. No fiddling about with brown paper and string and having to queue up in the post-office to get the thing weighed, and then pay the earth to send it off. Book tokens are God’s gift to the lazy-minded.”

  “You make them sound hardly worth receiving,” said Lionel, “yet I am always pleased when one or more—especially more—come my way.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose this one will,” said Clarissa.

  “We retire to consider my verdict,” said Dame Beatrice, taking Laura off with her. When they reached her room and she had closed the door, Laura produced the couple of pages of shorthand which she had been carrying everywhere with her and waited for instructions.

  “There are three marked C and two marked L,” she said. “Isn’t that a bit confusing?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t mean confusing to you and me. We can go by the context, but to somebody in a bit of a panic—invading your room, I mean, and all that—well, mightn’t he have picked the wrong C and landed himself with Catherine’s entry instead of, perhaps, Clarissa’s?”

  “It is possible, but if it was so important to him I do not think he would have picked up the wrong paper. If it was Owen, he would have known everybody’s writing, presumably, since he must have corresponded with all of us when he organised the expedition and is certainly familiar, one can assume, with Catherine’s hand; if it was Lionel, he would recognise Clarissa’s writing and anybody could tell at a glance which items of information had been scripted by the innocent and youthful Capella.”

  “There remains Stewart, so far as the men are concerned.”

  “Yes. There I am on less safe ground, I admit.”

  “And what about the women? If I had to choose between a man and a woman risking being seen oiling into yo
ur room with intent to sneak one of the papers, I would opt for one of our sex.”

  “You have a point.”

  “Well, we can knock out the nuns and me, so that leaves Catherine herself, who might have decided that her answers gave too much away; Capella, who wouldn’t have known Catherine’s writing from Clarissa’s, so may easily have picked the wrong set of answers; and Clarissa, who has had a row with Lionel. She makes up one half of a couple who seem to have something to hide.”

  “I think that, if Clarissa had taken one of the papers, it would have been Lionel’s.”

  “Same reason as his, only vice versa? Yes, I suppose that’s true. It rather brings me back to Owen, who proposed the game in the first place.”

  “Read to me what Catherine had written before her paper was abducted.”

  Catherine had written:

  “I came on this tour to try to get copy for my next novel. If I had not come I might have missed a most wonderful experience. My secret fear is of confined spaces and my pet superstition is that hell has no fury like a disappointed man.”

  “Well,” said Laura. “I don’t see why anybody needed to steal those answers.”

  “She has answered the second question in the way Professor Owen intended.”

  “The lonely spinster complex?”

  “Something more rational, perhaps. To resolve your own doubts—”

  “That somebody picked out the wrong set of answers? Well, now I look at them again, I still think I might be right. How about these being mistaken for one of the other two sets marked C? Here is another set.”

  “I was keen to come on the tour because I got interested in stone circles when I was very young. If I had not come, I suppose I would have been paying visits to my brothers and my sister, all married. Could not have afforded a holiday in Greece. My secret fear is of having to earn my own living as, like Wilfred Holmes, I am not capable of this, so my favourite superstition is that there really is a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

  “I think it is obvious who wrote all that.”

  “Oh, that’s Capella Babbacombe-Starr all right,” said Laura. “That only leaves Clarissa. Do you want to hear what she had to say?”

  “Oh, it will be interesting, since we know she has fallen out with Lionel.”

  Laura read aloud again from her shorthand.

  “I came on this tour to please Lionel. I would much rather have gone to the South of France. If I had not come, that is where I would be. My secret fear is that secrets leak out and my favourite superstition is that dead men do tell tales.”

  “So much for the three C’s,” said Laura. “Do you want to hear any more?”

  “As this is a competition, I suppose I had better hear all the entries. When you have read them to me and unless there is anything particularly striking about any of them, we will go downstairs and award the prize.”

  “Oh, you’ve decided upon the winner? Same as the one you first thought of?”

  “Yes, I shall announce that Sister Pascal has won Professor Owen’s prize. I am most impressed that she has expressed herself in rhyme. Read it again, please.”

  Laura complied. Sister Pascal had written:

  “I joined the tour, as you can see,

  To keep a Sister company.

  Had I not come, I should have gone

  To Bruges or Ghent or Ratisbon.

  With earthly fears I long have done,

  So superstitions have I none.”

  “Well,” said Dame Beatrice, “there has been worse verse. I think we may lay our hands on our swords and defy anybody to deny that in this short, trenchant poem we have the winning entry.”

  “Well, you had decided upon Sister Pascal all along.”

  “But how satisfying to be justified in my choice!”

  Her choice was not only justified, but was acclaimed by one and all. Sister Pascal, reduced, to Laura’s amusement, to blushing deprecation of the honour accorded her, was persuaded to read her contribution aloud. She took the longhand copy which Laura had made, looked at it, and said,

  “But this isn’t my writing.”

  “No,” said Dame Beatrice. “Some of the answers were revealing and others were obviously untruthful, so I thought it discreet to destroy all the papers. Besides,” she added, when the laughter had subsided, “the fact is that Professor Owen’s large envelope, so thoughtfully provided, would not fit into my handbag, so I asked Laura to take down all the answers in shorthand, read them back to me, and transcribe the one of my choice.”

  That night there came a tap at her bedroom door. She opened it to find Catherine standing in the corridor.

  “I would like to know,” said the visitor, “whether you found my answers either revealing or untruthful. They were not intended to be either, although I think you were joking when you used those words.”

  “Come in,” said Dame Beatrice. Catherine entered and Dame Beatrice closed the door. “As I told everybody, all the papers have been destroyed, but I remember your answers perfectly well for a very good reason.”

  “You thought them morbid and fanciful, perhaps.”

  “Not so. I remember them because the original draft, the one you yourself had written, was stolen while I was out of my room. Fortunately I still had Laura’s shorthand version to fall back on. Can I help you in any way?”

  “Oh, I don’t need a psychiatrist.”

  “May I ask you one question, a practical one?”

  “I am not a woman wailing for a demon lover.”

  “My dear Miss Catherine!”

  “Oh, ask your question. I need not answer it.”

  “Did any member of our party know of your fear of confined spaces?”

  “My cousin Owen may know. As a child I always refused to play hide and seek. At a tender age I learned about The Mistletoe Bough, and it frightened me very much.”

  “A strangely-titled song,” Dame Beatrice said, and waited. At the back of her mind were the tombs in Kilmartin valley.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Catherine, after a pause. “It begins: The mistletoe hung in the castle hall.”

  “Yes. I always wonder why people have mistletoe in their homes at Christmas. It used to be regarded as a sacred plant not unconnected with death.”

  “Human sacrifice, I suppose you mean. Oh, well, we have two lambs among us and both are at risk, I’m afraid. I refer to Sister Veronica and Miss Babbacombe-Starr. Both are young, both vulnerable, both virgins, and both visionaries. They could not be in greater danger. We have predators among us, Dame Beatrice.”

  Dame Beatrice wondered what Stewart had talked about while he and Catherine had been alone together in Kilmartin valley. She said, “Perhaps you should look to yourself, my dear Miss Owen. Remember that I am not the only person who has read your answers to the Truth Game.”

  CHAPTER 8

  CAPELLA’S DREAM

  “The evil about which you ask me has been sown, but its reaping has not yet come.”

  2 Esdras 4 v. 28 (New English Bible; Apocrypha)

  “Is something worrying you?” asked Laura, on the following morning.

  “No,” Dame Beatrice replied. “I am worried only when I cannot make up my mind.”

  “Well, that doesn’t happen very often. Do I ask what has been causing you to take thought?”

  “Certainly, especially as I may need your help.”

  “More shorthand?”

  “No, I want you to persuade young Miss Babbacombe-Starr to come to the Outer Hebrides with us if my own representations to her are unsuccessful.”

  “I don’t think I shall be needed. She’s only a kid and she’ll do as you tell her.”

  “On the face of it, yes, but she may feel a little delicate in accepting the trip as a gift from me.”

  “Oh, Lord, yes, the financial angle. She told me she borrowed the money from her father to come on this tour, so she won’t have budgeted for a stay on Lewis. Why do you want her to come with us?”

&n
bsp; “I refer you once again to the sheep and the goats. The trouble will be with one of the goats if I attempt to detach her from him.”

  “Oh, Stewart, you mean. So we’re really going to Stornoway, are we? Thank you for standing firm with Owen. After all, the stones on Lewis were on the programme he sent us. What about the nuns?”

  “I shall have a word with Sister Pascal, I think. Fortunately nobody but ourselves knows what was written on Sister Veronica’s Truth Game paper.”

  Laura took the sheets of shorthand out of her handbag and looked at the entry marked V.

  “I came on the tour for educational purposes. If I had not come I should have been staying at our convent in Kent. My secret fear is of having to see the next thing that happens, but I do not indulge in superstition because it is allied to witchcraft and therefore sinful.”

  “Yes,” said Dame Beatrice, “her secret fear, I suspect, is connected with this wraith which flits from stone to stone and is visible only to Sister Veronica, who is a mystic, and the child Capella, who can see anything which is suggested to her.”

  “You don’t mean they are both seeing a ghost? We did mention ghosts, I remember.”

  “I am not sure what they are seeing, but I am going to issue a solemn warning to Sister Pascal not to let Sister Veronica out of her sight when we get to Inverness, and you and I must make ourselves responsible for Capella. I did not like the way the Truth Game had to be played and I do not like it at all that the rumour of this flitting figure has gone the round of our party.”

  “Thanks to Stewart.”

  “He is mischievous and irresponsible and may find himself in trouble for someone else’s sins.”

  “Not only a goat, but a scapegoat, you think, our young archaeologist?”

  “The scapegoat itself is always an innocent party, remember,” said Dame Beatrice. “I mentioned someone else’s sins.”

  The original plan, as set out in Owen’s letter of invitation to Dame Beatrice and Laura, had specified a one-night stay in Inverness, as two of the party wanted to leave the tour there. After that the rest of the travellers would be going to Ullapool on the following morning to make the crossing to Stornoway.