“Good lord, no,” I lied politely. “I’m enjoying myself.”
Myles removed from his mouth the rather foul pipe through which he had hitherto been speaking; he lowered his voice. “I hope you don’t think that damn’ little ass meant anything against Stella,” he said.
“Afraid I’m not with you.”
“Naming that bloody doll after her, I mean.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I thought you’d have heard him. Sure it’s only nonsense anyhow. There’s no harm in it.”
“Not by any standards. He couldn’t get the pins in.”
“Except into himself.” Myles laughed. “The doll’s got a bit burnt — you must have smelt it — but I never heard of real witches doing that.”
“Nor I. At any rate, if I find Stella burnt to death when I get out there, I’ll know who to blame.”
For some moments I had been hearing a faint tinkling noise which at first I had thought to be imaginary and then put down to some distant radio or television set; it now became obvious that it was made by the warning bell of an approaching ambulance, or police car — or fire engine. I saw the realisation in Myles’s eyes almost simultaneously with my own certainty and in time for us both to be in the van of a sudden rush towards the front of the cottage. A fire engine in a hurry carries a more personal message for dwellers in lonely places, and perhaps that is why most of the guests ran to see it pass; I ran because I wanted reassurance that the long arm of coincidence was not up to some nasty trick — so perhaps the fall had addled my brain after all.
The engine was in sight; neither so modern nor so impressive as its city counterparts, it was yet big enough to overfill the road and its gong was dinging for all it was worth to warn any traffic that there might be to find refuge in some side-turning. We stood and watched it pass; we couldn’t very well stop the thing just to ask where the fire was. We were, however, not left very long in doubt. A police car, obviously unable on account of the narrowness of the way to overtake the fire engine, had been following it with a bad grace; at the sight of the now considerable number of cars jamming the parking space before the cottages, the driver pulled up with a jerk and stuck his head out of the window.
“Is Mr. Hazard there with you?” he called.
“No, he’s not. Why?”
Doubtless in accordance with the principle that a policeman’s business is to ask questions rather than to answer them, the driver did no more than wave an acknowledgment and change his foot from the brake to the accelerator. There could, however, now be little doubt as to the location of the fire; the question that remained to be answered was — what was burning?
CHAPTER III
I reached the scene of the fire some few minutes after the brigade started operations.
Marr’s henchman, Joe, drove me out to Hazard Point in his employer’s “delectable Caddy,” minus Marr but plus the girl April, who seemed disinclined to let a good driving prospect out of her sight; hot on our heels came others of the Mylses’ guests, spurred on by God knows what feelings of guilt, or anticipation, vague unease or simple curiosity. The fire was neither in a rick or barn as I had hoped nor in Hazard Point itself as I had feared but in a rented cottage on Barney’s property, and up to the time of our arrival nothing had been heard or seen of the occupants; firemen, we were told, had already entered one part of the building but nothing was as yet known of what they had found.
The little holding was situated a couple of hundred yards beyond Barney’s main gates in the centre of the fertile valley that, as I remembered from former visits, was sheltered alike from the Atlantic gales and the cold airs from the north by a crescent of hills; this was the golden vein of Barney’s patrimony, a peninsular oasis between the wastes of ocean and the barren land, a fortunate place that would have been full of the scents of the summer evening but for the all-pervading stench of the blazing thatch and whatever else was burning that was so unpleasantly reminiscent of the smouldering doll. It is not nice to stand and watch anyone’s home go up in flames, to feel the heat and see the devastation and do nothing, but the time was past for amateur intervention; besides, a couple of beefy Civic Guards — who obviously took a poor view of our presence — made us keep our distance. We stood together and stared, but we did not speak, not until the body was found.
I am not yet quite sure how the news reached us, because the drama took place at the back of the cottage and we were penned on the road, with a view only of the front and of a blank side-wall; nevertheless a whisper of information went round among us, with nothing that I could see to start it off other than the appearance of a dishevelled sergeant who beckoned away one of our two guards.
“A woman it was,” I heard someone mutter.
“A young one — no more than a girl,” another voice insisted.
“Is she ——?”
“Oh — gone, poor devil. Sure who could live in that?”
“Wasn’t every stitch of clothes burnt off her?”
“Wouldn’t you think she could have got out?”
“The point is, what was she doing there? They say the owner was away.”
They were speaking in whispers, or at any rate only barely loud enough to be heard above the noise of the flames and — whatever their source of information — they were telling either too much or too little.
“Who is she?” I asked.
I had not meant to shout but even to my ears it was too loud, a sort of tortured croak from a throat dried by alcohol and fire; its effect was to bring silence. I glared round at the crowd whom I had not previously identified as individuals: beside me was my cousin Juliet, her face white and old-looking beyond her years, her eyes fixed on the flames and her hands clutching Kinky Myles’s arm; by contrast April, who was snuggling up against her new boy-friend Joe, seemed merely relaxed and interested. It was, however, men’s voices that had been whispering, and it was from men that I sought a reply. No one looked at me at all.
“Is the woman’s identity known yet?” I demanded.
I was probably torturing myself for nothing; it was odds on that Stella, glass in hand, was watching the blaze from her dining-room window at Hazard Point, but it was bad enough that any woman should burn — and I wanted to know. Only Joe had the decency not to avoid my eye.
“Search me,” he said. “I’m a stranger here myself.”
The guard, whose broad back was still blocking the way, had taken no notice of my question, though he must have heard it; even if he knew anything, he obviously had no intention of being informative. I turned my back on the fire and walked slowly away from it along the road; no one showed any inclination to follow. Round the first bend I found a place where I could squeeze through the roadside hedge and in its shelter made my way back more quickly towards the cottage. From this new angle the activities of the fire fighters were more in evidence but it was not they who interested me, for at the end of the cottage garden four or five coatless men were grouped, their attention centred on something other than the fire; it needed no particular acumen to determine why policemen were thus unwontedly displaying their braces. One of the men, however, was too small to be a member of the Civic Guard and his shirt and trousers were not such as any sort of fireman would have worn on duty, while his dishevelment and the look of shock and horror that was expressed even in the way in which he was standing betrayed him as one who was not professionally attuned to the disasters of life. With a new access of fear I realised that he was Barney. I broke into a run.
I had to round a thick clump of flowering shrubs before seeing the body; even then all that was visible was a human shape completely covered by uniform tunics and one rather gay tweed jacket. There was nothing to see that I had not anticipated — but I had forgotten that there would be a smell, or at any rate I had forgotten that the smell would be neither pungent nor revolting but horribly reminiscent of bacon under the grill; the obscenity of the mental association nearly made me vomit, so that I was staggering rather than running
when I reached the group. I was unable to speak.
No one told me to go away. Perhaps they thought I had brought a message and was too overcome to impart it. The sergeant — even without his tunic he carried the perceptible stigmata of his rank — inspected me from bloodshot eyes; I noticed that his hair was singed and one hand wrapped in a rather makeshift bandage.
“What’s keeping the priest?” he asked.
I shook my head then managed to say — “I only just got here.”
“Are you the occupant?”
With a jerk Barney came back from whatever gloomy fields of thought he had been wandering in and recognised me; he patted my arm by way, perhaps, of a wordless assurance to the sergeant that I was all right, that I was a friend. “Standish — my God, what a way to welcome you,” he said.
Barney was a small man supercharged with nervous energy, at times almost embarrassingly determined to do more than his duty as a neighbour, as a landlord or as a host; everything that he did, even the simplest thing like eating or drinking or lighting a pipe, was done at tremendous speed and with an extravagant expenditure of his energy, as if he were impatient of the time taken up by any action or thought — indeed it used to be said of him in the days when he rode in point-to-points that he was always half a length ahead of his horse. Now, however, he was in a situation that he could not manage and, because he had always managed everything, he seemed pathetically at a loss.
“How did you get here?” he asked.
“Bus to Rossderg, then a hired bicycle till I fell into a ditch trying to avoid a passing car. I got a lift the rest of the way.”
“You must be starving. Are you hurt?”
I shook my head.
Barney’s moustache bristled: I was something that he could cope with. “You need a drink anyhow.” He produced a bunch of keys from a trouser-pocket. “Take my car. There’s nothing you can do to help. You can say that the sergeant will run me home when we’re finished here.”
Barney had not actually mentioned Stella as one would have expected him to, but his demeanour — for all his haggard appearance and unwonted tentativeness — was certainly not that of a man who has just lost his wife under peculiarly ghastly circumstances, nor did the sergeant and the others behave towards him as if he had any deep personal concern in the tragedy; in any case, it was not in me to ask whose remains lay under the assortment of coats. I took the keys and went to look for the car.
There are not many people in these days whose gates are so far away from their houses that the intervening distance is a matter for driving rather than walking but Barney was a man fortunate in his inheritance and fortunate in his ability to make money work for him. Aided by the barrenness of the surrounding country he had made good use of the fertility of Hazard Point and he had chosen with unerring skill the most productive from among the various enterprises which would have been glad to have his ancient name on their boards of directors even before he had given proof of a business acumen of which his forebears might have been somewhat ashamed. In spite of this — or perhaps because it enabled him to be so — he was open-handed in his hospitality, though oddly close-fisted over some things; he had telephones in his estate office in the village, for instance, but he obstinately refused to lay out the amount — something like sixty pounds per pole, I think it was — that would have brought the line the extra mile or so to his house. Since, however, the tiny local exchange shut down at night anyhow, I suppose it did not make much difference.
The absence of a suitable water supply had made the suppression of the fire a much slower job than it would otherwise have been. I was surprised to find that away from the glare of the flames it was dark. I had to light a match to locate the switches in Barney’s old shooting-brake and to see the time — nearly half past ten. It had been a long day without food — not that I felt like eating — and rather too eventful. I felt that I could do with a rest. The car started easily; I drove up the six furlongs of avenue and stopped before the door of Hazard Point.
It could not be said that the old Georgian house was a blaze of light. The big double doors were open and beyond them could be seen the dimly lit hall; the rest of the building was a shade darker than the night. When I switched off the engine I could hear the muffled barking of dogs. Further to announce my arrival I gave a couple of tootles on the horn, then trotted up the steps and waited to be welcomed — in vain. After a minute or so I sought for, found and purposefully pushed the bell but without any more satisfactory result than to give a new edge to the barking. I am very fond of dogs, most dogs, but I had little wish to crash in unannounced on a number of strange ones when no human was present to make the introductions, so it was not without some misgiving that I entered the house to explore. Since no light was showing in any of the front rooms, there seemed to be no point in trying the drawing-room or dining-room, one beyond the other to my left if I remembered correctly, nor Barney’s study to the right; a small room behind the study and with windows giving on the back held out more hope and towards this I made my way. I was reaching out for the door handle when a voice spoke from behind me.
“What are you creeping about for? What have you been up to?”
At the same time a brighter light clicked on, illuminating the staircase’s rather impressive final curve round which Stella came slowly into view. Some hours earlier, in that mood of petty childishness induced by the tedious bus journey and the disappointment of not being met, I had wanted to come back into her life dramatically, to “make an entrance”; in the event it was she who made the old-fashioned star’s entrance in a blaze of light, while I was discovered rather furtively trying a door handle in the shadows. She looked wonderful; never in any other place or circumstance in which I had known her had she seemed more lovely.
She peered at me for a moment then — “Standish,” she whispered. Without being conscious of movement I found her in my arms.
I had not seen this girl for some time. I had — through the persuasion of alcohol and concussion — imagined her to be in danger of death, or even actually dead. We had always been physically attuned; now that I found her gloriously alive, the old chemical magic took control, and for once we were in the same emotional key. We almost fused into one entity where we stood. I know only too well what would have happened if a torrent of dogs had not suddenly swirled about us.
“I thought I heard the bell, mam,” observed an elderly and somewhat disapproving voice from the shadows.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Kealey, thank you.” Stella detached herself from me without undue haste. “Mr. Wyse found his own way in.”
“Sure didn’t he know it of old?” The tone in which the words were spoken left their meaning rather uncertain. “Will he want his dinner now?”
It was not only dogs that Mrs. Kealey had liberated; an appetising smell of cooking had followed her and them up from the nether parts of the house. At least it would have been appetising if it had not reminded me of what lay under the coats in the garden of the burning cottage.
“Oh no! Nothing to eat, thanks,” I said too quickly and too decisively. I noticed that I still croaked.
There was a moment of silence while Stella looked at me and Mrs. Kealey seemed to exude the taking of umbrage. The soft noses of dogs inquired into my immediate past.
“I think I swallowed too much smoke at the fire,” I explained.
“Was Barney there?”
I had to go into details then, of course: how I had travelled to Rossderg, why we had failed to meet, what had happened to my hired bicycle, and where I was when I heard of the fire. Obviously I said nothing of the amateur witchcraft scena at that ghastly party and — out of a reluctance to speak of it in front of Mrs. Kealey — nothing of the charred body that had been taken from the fire. I was forgiven for not wanting to eat, but I knew that I could not get away with what in Ireland is the final discourtesy, refusing a drink. It was not very long before I found myself ensconced in the little back room with Stella and a bottle of Arma
gnac. Four golden labradors fitted smoothly into a picture that I found restful and charming though a little uncertain in outline, probably due to my having stared too long at the flames.
“You’ve got thin, darling,” Stella said. “It suits you.”
She was curled up in a big chair, the mixture of dark brown and gold that was her hair blending with the healthy tan of a face that, whether in laughter or in rage, was always alive; she was more or less wearing a brief thing so exactly the sun-burned colour of her limbs that it was difficult to tell where it left off and she began. She seemed to have got younger with the years.
“I like your dress,” I said.
“It’s Courrèges.” She wriggled a little, presumably to show it off to better advantage. “I put it on specially for you.”
“Then you’re lucky I wasn’t hungry — otherwise I’d have eaten you before this.”
“I thought you were going to — in the hall a few minutes ago.”
“Sorry about that.” Without due regard for its age or quality — or for that matter quantity — I knocked back my drink in one swallow. “The day was unnerving and it was like heaven to see you again. I don’t normally try to rape my friends’ wives.”
“I didn’t stop you.” I was beyond the reach of her hand; she stretched out a foot from which a sort of clog-sandal affair had fallen and touched my knee with her toes. “I never tried to stop you.”
“But you weren’t married then,” I said.
“Married!” Her voice took on a momentary harshness. “You needn’t worry about that.”
The water seemed to be getting deep again. I may be a cad but I try not to be. “Barney should be home any minute now,” I suggested. At the same time I caressed Stella’s toes; I had no wish to appear rude.
“He could be here now, if he wanted to be.”
She had always worn her toe-nails long and carefully shaped and covered with lacquer of some exotic shade; now she wore only colourless varnish which showed a pearly glint against the carefully graduated sun-tan of her feet and legs. “There’s something I haven’t told you,” I said.
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