Merlin's Furlong

by Gladys Mitchell

  At last the wire fence ended, and the headlamps picked out a vast, uncharted, boundless, uninhabited plain. It was as though the car had been transported to the middle of an unmapped continent. The road, such as it was, petered out, and the car, still bumping, ran on to virgin turf, and Waite decided to stop.

  “What are you stopping for?” demanded Piper.

  “Because we’re going to sleep in the car,” Waite replied. “We’re up against Mount Everest, I think.”

  “Something does seem to be looming,” said Piper, peering through the windscreen.

  Harrison, who had the back of the car to himself, opened the near-side door and got out. The moon, which, hitherto, had been screened, except intermittently, by cloud, swam into a patch of clear sky. Beneath her light, an asymmetrical and awe-inspiring mass rose, menacing and eerie, before him. Contrasting shadows of blue-black, grey, and greenish-purple indicated depressions and indentations in the mass, and at one point, directly in front of the car, there rose a causeway, verdant in the moonlight, which seemed to lead to some ghostly sanctuary.

  Harrison returned to the car, got in, and shut the door with a boom which seemed to rebound from the grisly hill.

  “It’s Merlin’s Fort, all right, I should think,” he said. “It looks like some dashed great earthwork, and it’s probably haunted.”

  “Better explore it, then,” suggested Piper. “I’m sick of sitting in this car.”

  “You’d break your neck,” said Harrison. He seized the only rug, disposed himself along the back seat, and, as usual, wooed and won the welcome bride, sweet slumber.

  “Well, I’m dashed!” said Piper. “What does David think we can do on these two bucket seats? Shall we wake him up and throw him into the night?”

  “Not so, but far otherwise,” responded Waite. “Look, Peter, back there a bit I think there’s a whole lot of heather. Pinch the rug back from David and we’ll toss for it, the other to take the raincoats. Then you and I will doss in the heather. I’ve done it before and it’s certainly much more comfortable than the two front seats of the car.”

  “Right,” agreed Piper. He took away Harrison’s rug without disturbing that gifted sleeper, and he and Waite tossed up by the light of Waite’s torch. Waite won, but elected to take the two raincoats.

  “I’d like one to roll up for a pillow,” he explained.

  Harrison was the first up when day dawned. He crept out of the car, discovered, without surprise, the sleeping-place chosen by his companions, and climbed the hill to explore the Iron Age fort. Upon descending he met a forlorn-looking man who exchanged greetings with him. Harrison followed these up by enquiring the way to Merlin’s Furlong. The man denied any knowledge of the place.

  “Merlin’s Castle, like, and this be no sort of a way, if you comes in a car, to get to she,” he said definitely. He passed on, a silhouette against the sunrise. Harrison gazed after him and then returned to his friends, whom he found still asleep in the heather. He roused them. Waite looked hollow-eyed, and Piper confessed he felt stiff. There was nothing to eat, and around them stretched the primitive landscape, agonizingly desolate, desolately beautiful, like the Spanish princess who had lost her lover. Before them stood the stark, long-abandoned stronghold of Merlin’s Fort; behind them was the fickle and bumpy road over which they had previously journeyed. Waite sighed, and turned the car round.

  “Nothing now but a miracle…” he said. “Anyway, I’m hungry. If we can find anywhere for breakfast we’ll stop and have it.” The car bumped back along the trackway, and soon overtook the man to whom Harrison had spoken. Waite pulled up.

  “Breakfast?” said the man. “Well, you baint very far from Moundbury.” He gave them precise directions.

  “Well, I’m hanged!” exclaimed Harrison. “Polly, you chump, you’ve been driving us round in circles!”

  “Sorry,” said Waite without betraying contrition. “Never mind. You can take the wheel now, if you like.”

  The car gained the high road and headed again for Moundbury. A late breakfast and another interview with the hotel porter followed. Nothing was gained. The porter declared that the gentlemen had enquired the way to Merlin’s Castle. The gentlemen were equally insistent that they had asked for Merlin’s Furlong. Deadlock was reached. Harrison, who, all along, had had very little stomach for the business, again and again urged that they should return home, but Waite was insistent that Merlin’s Furlong existed and must be found. They decided to leave the matter until after lunch, feeling the need for armchair slumber in the lounge. By this time, too, both Piper and Harrison were in favour of assuming that Aumbry’s house was Castle, not Furlong, and that they should accept the porter’s directions as being correct and use the rest of the daylight for following them.

  The car then set off once more, Piper, in the back seat, declaring loudly and beerily that love would find a way. Waite, determined and frowning, sat beside Harrison, who was driving. They turned northward because Harrison had a secret theory that if they could once strike the main road from Marlborough all his troubles would be at an end and he could drive his companions half-way home before Waite discovered what was happening.

  His luck was out. Before the car had covered seven miles there was a signpost which showed, by implication, that they were going in the right direction. It read: MERLIN’S HAZARD 5. BLOODPUDDLE 7. PENNYROYAL 9. MERLIN’S ELL 12.

  The miles were long ones, and the road was hilly. The car drove through the signpost-named villages, which seemed asleep, and across the checkered landscape with its prehistoric entrenchments and sacred sites, its round barrows, and its ancient terraced fields, until at last a high stone wall cut off the view to the left. The road marched with this for more than a mile. It seemed to be the boundary wall of a very considerable park, and was broken by an occasional wooden door.

  The wall cast a deep shadow over the road, and Waite, who had been keeping a keen eye on their progress, seemed depressed as he commented upon the height and the apparent length of it. He announced that he was battling with his first doubts as to the advisability of their mission. Harrison drove on at a reduced speed. He was hoping that the wall would not disclose an open gate. The wall let him down.

  “Here we are,” said Piper, as the wall gave way to an unguarded opening. “This is it, I feel certain.” Harrison, the tool of Fate, took the turning and the car ran slowly past a deserted lodge and up a long, unweeded gravel drive. “At least”—Piper’s confident tones gave way to more hesitant utterance—“I suppose it is, but it looks such a whacking great place.”

  His stupor, due to the beer, had worn off, and he was sitting forward, peering between the shoulders of the two in front.

  “It must be,” agreed Waite. “There’s one thing”—he stared critically at the house through the windscreen—“it ought to be easy enough to get in.”

  The house was, in size and grandeur, far beyond any of their expectations…a huge pile of Jacobean architecture with a dry moat surrounding it and a handsome, ornate stone bridge (which led to a double doorway the width of a minor road) spanning what had once been water.

  “Shocking big place,” insisted Piper; and there was indeed something shocking in all that decayed and mullioned grandeur.

  Over the magnificent doorway was a pillared porch, part of which represented the full achievement of a peer of the realm, escutcheon, coronet, helmet, crest, mantling, and motto. This porch formed a balcony to a long window which had four lights of equal width divided from one another by a narrow framework of stone. One of the lights had lost most of its glass.

  “Too easy to be interesting,” said Harrison, hoping that the very simplicity of the task in view would deter his misguided friends. As he spoke, a man carrying a small portmanteau came into view at the side of the house and walked towards them. He was respectably dressed in a black jacket and striped trousers, and wore an unimpeachable bowler.

  “Jeeves in person,” said Piper, and advanced a step or two to meet him. “
I do hope we are not intruding,” he said, courteously.

  “Not at all, sir,” the man civilly and quietly replied. “No doubt you know we are up for sale. If you have an order to view…”

  “Er, I’m afraid not, no. A very fine old place, though. You must be proud to live in it.”

  “Indeed, yes, sir. But it wants a lot of keeping up, these days, and sell we must, so if you should care to ask for an order to view I could show you round before I leave. Without it, I could scarcely venture.”

  “Of course not,” said Waite. “Look here, can we give you a lift with that bag as far as the station?”

  “Very kind indeed of you, sir.” The man picked up his portmanteau, which he had set down during the conversation, and it was soon in the boot. He himself was given the spare seat, and the party of four drove back on to the road and were guided by the manservant towards a branch-line station about two miles out of the tiny hamlet which the young men had already passed through, and which was called Merlin’s Ell.

  “I believe your employer is a collector of antiques,” remarked Piper, who was sharing the back seat with the man.

  “He used to be, sir…at least, the old gentleman was. But there’s nothing like that now. Pictures, ornaments, trophies…they’ve all had to go the same way. I’m the only manservant left, and we used to have a staff of thirty in my grandfather’s time. Now there’s only me, the cook, and a couple of maids, but the master’s away a good deal of the time, so we manage.”

  “I suppose most of the house is shut up, then?”

  “Nearly all of it, sir. Just except for two or three rooms in case there’s company, and our bedrooms and the kitchen, of course, and the master’s own room. It comes easier that way, but it’s a sad thing, sir, to see a great house in decay.”

  They dropped him at the station, received renewed and courteous thanks, and drove off, still travelling away from the house. This was at Piper’s suggestion.

  “Don’t want to give him the impression that we’re going back there,” he observed. “We’re sure to find a turning somewhere that will take us back along another road. Mistake to have given him a lift, in a way, because he’ll remember us. Still, we had to get rid of him, I suppose. Bit of a nuisance meeting him, all the same.” He relapsed into a thoughtful silence which was shortly broken by Waite.

  “One thing, with him out of the way, there will be nobody to cope with except Aumbry and the women-servants,” he observed. “It’s a bit of a sitter, isn’t it?” He sounded so disconsolate that Harrison said hastily:

  “Too much of a sitter altogether, Polly. What about turning it up?”

  “Not on your life,” said Waite. “I said I’d get the diptych back, and I’m going to do it. After all, if the job had turned out to be really sticky (which it may still do if Aumbry packs a gun, and these country cousins usually do) we shouldn’t have given it up, so I don’t see…”

  “Oh, all right,” said Harrison in despair. “We shall all get jugged, but what of it? I shall look forward to seeing you with your little pick-axe and wearing your nice new Government suit with the pretty markings.”

  “Did he have cold feet, then?” asked Piper. He changed his tone. “As a matter of fact, so have I. But we can’t back out, David. I agree with Polly there. Tell you what, though, Polly,” he added, “the difficulty is not to get into the place…you could do that in your sleep…but to find the diptych. It might be anywhere, and is probably in Aumbry’s bedroom. Had you thought about that?”

  “Yes,” said Waite. “But I’ve got an old Army revolver in with the tool kit. I shall take it with me and hold the thieving old jackdaw up if I can’t get the diptych any other way.”

  “Oh, Lord! Don’t be such a fool!” said the unhappy Harrison. “If that’s your idea you’d better let me do the job. Yes, now, Polly, look here, you stay below to catch the thing when I drop it. I’m a good bit taller than you, and can skid quicker from that porch if pursued. And at least I wouldn’t be fooling about with revolvers.”

  “We could both go,” said Waite, as though struck by a brilliant idea. “The place is too big. Yes, we’ll split up the rooms between us. Be a whole heap quicker that way. I don’t suppose for a minute that Aumbry keeps the diptych in his bedroom. Why should he? He’d never think of anybody coming like a thief in the night to get it back. Look, let’s do that if you think you can be reasonably catlike. I’ve brought a couple of string bags which will slip over our wrists and not get in the way when we’re climbing down again. Then we need not have anybody below to catch the thing, and that will also avoid any chance of damaging it. Peter will have to be ready to start the car at a second’s notice, and here, I hope, is a play fitted. What comments, if any?”

  “Well, as you seem to be set on it, I suppose there’s no point in arguing. There’s only one thing. I hope the women won’t set up a screaming, for that I could not abide.”

  “Oh, Lord! I’d forgotten women might do that. We shall just have to throttle them, that’s all, although murder is hardly the recognised behaviour of cat-burglars, and might be a union matter.”

  “Then you’ll do the strangling,” said Harrison. “Fancy trying to choke a lymphatic cook-general of fifty! If they scream, I shall run like a rabbit.”

  “Don’t anticipate events. Where’s this turning we rather optimistically counted on? One thing, as that fellow in the bowler had his bag, he won’t be coming back. Better turn the car at this next gateway, David. The chap must have disappeared by now.”

  Harrison turned the car, and, driving with exemplary care (for he did not propose to get back to the house an instant before he need), at last he brought the party once more to the open gateway.

  “I’m hungry,” he said, as he pulled up. “What about driving on?”

  “Not on your life,” said Waite. “We brought plenty of grub from Moundbury to last the night. Drive in. If anybody comes and shoos us off, we’ll park the car on the other side of that hill and sneak back as soon as they’ve gone.”

  Harrison, shrugging hopelessly, and finding uninspiring and fearful visions of Dartmoor in his mind, drove very slowly through the gates. The three young men got out and concealed themselves in the bushes. Piper picked a few leaves and put them on the bonnet of the car, but decided that they did not disguise her.

  “Don’t play the fool, Peter,” said Waite. “Keep watch and ward. I don’t like the look of this business. If there are women servants about, surely one of them heard the sound of the car!”

  “I expect they’re all murdered in their beds, and the bag that man was carrying contains their heads,” said Piper. “If so, we’re accessories after the fact for aiding and abetting his escape by carrying, conveying and devil-portering him to a railway station, goods-siding or permanent way, to the detriment, destruction, and disintegration of the law of the land and the peace of Her Majesty’s subjects.”

  “It’s not at all nice,” said Harrison, “and I still want my dinner.”

  “Stand by for a bit,” said Waite. “I’m going to do a spot of sleuthing. There must be somebody about, if it’s only a caretaker.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Merlin’s Folly

  “There have I made my promise to call on him

  Upon the heavy middle of the night.

  —Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

  Waite returned without any information except to report that there seemed no sign of life anywhere. The three young men waited and watched, but no tradesmen or visitors called, no servant, either man or woman, appeared, and nobody worked in the garden. Harrison, at seven o’clock, again announced that he wanted his dinner, and produced potato crisps, cheese rolls, half a chicken, two cold fishcakes, a lobster sandwich, a cucumber and some bottled beer. The others unrolled equally interesting meals and all three drank Harrison’s beer.

  “Well, now,” said Waite, when the diverse repasts were over and they had sneaked out on to the road and lighted their pipes, “as I say, I do
n’t much like the look of things, but it’s easy enough to get in, and it will be easy enough to get out. No one seems to be about, which is extremely odd, but the servants may be on board wages and that man we met may simply be going on his holiday. Still, it’s queer that there isn’t so much as a caretaker in the place.”

  “So it’s just a case of laying hands on the diptych,” said Piper, in the easy tone of one who knew that this was not to be his task. Waite nodded, pulled at his briar for a moment or two, and then said, stabbing the air with its stem:

  “It’s a much bigger house than I had supposed. I suggest we crack it at dusk. There’s a lot of heavy cloud coming up. I think we’re in for a storm.”

  “Let’s hope there’s plenty of thunder, then,” said Harrison. “Anything that helps to drown our noises and create a diversion will be welcome. I don’t believe the house is empty. It doesn’t look empty, somehow.”

  “Look here,” said Piper, whose indulgent fondness for kittens was sometimes, although not often, extended to the human race, “I’ll climb with Polly, if you like, David, and you can handle the car.”

  “No. I’d go to sleep at the wheel, and then we might all be nabbed,” responded Harrison. He looked up at the lowering sky. “ ‘A foul bombard that would shed his liquor.’ Polly’s right. It’s going to be the brute of an evening.”

  The rain began at eight, but there was no thunder. There was still not a sight or a sound of anybody up at the house, and no lights were showing. There was a break in the heavy sky to the north-east, and through it glared malevolently a lurid setting sun. It burned in the diamond casements of the house like a conflagration, and Harrison’s long, lean body shivered with apprehension as he looked at it.

  “The Ides of March,” remarked Piper, following his gaze. “Cheer up, David, dear. It will all be over by tomorrow!”