‘I should think it would come out at the inquest.’
‘Will it? Perhaps I shan’t be listening. What did he leave her, then?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Shares in things, and some houses….’
‘Mostly mortgaged, I expect.’
‘You don’t like what you know of Mr Lingfield, do you? I thought men always backed up other men.’
‘They do, when they know them. I didn’t know Lingfield, and that lets me out, you see. As I see him, he was a swine, and what he got serves him right.’
‘Does it? I suppose that’s all right then. By the way, if Mrs Denbies—I mean, suppose that they thought she did murder Mr Lingfield, she couldn’t—I mean, could she inherit anything?’
‘No, of course she couldn’t. You can’t, under English law, gain anything by murdering your benefactor. I’m perfectly sure of that.’
‘Something ought to hang on that, somehow, but, in this case, I can’t see what.’
‘Someone, you probably mean, but—take it as read. I say, I feel a lot better. I think I’ll go and smoke a cigarette. One should always break training (into which, incidentally, I never really go) before the final round.’
‘But this won’t be the final round.’
‘I expect it will for us,’ said Roger with great philosophy.
‘So you lost in the final round?’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘There is something Greek about that.’
‘Of all things, not to be born into the world is best,’ said Roger, grinning. He looked fagged but cheerful, and his scalp wound had been found to be superficial. The aggressor had either missed his kick or not kicked hard enough. Nevertheless, the victim, having played three games since the accident, was feeling that he had had enough for one day. He said as much.
‘Never mind. You played a splendid game. My hearty congratulations,’ said Mrs Bradley. She patted his muscular shoulder. ‘And did you enjoy the matches?’
‘Not so that you’d notice,’ said Roger, touching his bandaged head. ‘One of the spectators seemed to think this was the ball.’
‘I know. Too bad. May I look?’
‘Oh, I think it’s all right. I didn’t have any concussion.’
‘That can come later. Let me look.’
‘No, really, it’s quite all right.’
‘You weren’t thinking of going on the spree tonight by way of celebration, by any chance?’
‘Well, we did think we’d go up to town.’
‘Not you, child. Alcohol won’t help this head of yours.’
‘Oh, but really …’
Mrs Bradley made an almost imperceptible sign to Dorothy.
‘Please come with me, Roger,’ said the girl.
‘Come where?’ He looked surprised.
‘To Mrs Bradley’s country place at Wandles. We’re invited there for Sunday, and as long as we like to stay.’
‘Are we?’ He looked very pleased and, suddenly, very young. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not feeling much like a night on the roof with the lads. When and how do we go?’
‘At once, if you like. Henri and Célestine went down this morning, and Mrs Ribbon is always there to keep the place aired,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘My secretary also is there. I think you’ll both like Laura. Bob also has promised to come, but he has to go back tomorrow evening.’
‘I’ll have to go back to my digs and pack a bag.’
‘I’d better come with you,’ said Dorothy.
‘I’ll pick you up at your lodgings,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I am sorry to say that Claudia cannot come.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ muttered Roger. ‘No, I’m going straight home,’ he added to two members of his Seven who were just coming out of the gate. ‘Sorry and all that. Some other time.’
‘Are you really glad Mrs Denbies isn’t coming?’ Dorothy asked, as they took the road towards the station.
‘You bet!’ said Roger emphatically, tucking her arm in his. ‘I say, it’s cold! What’s this place of Mrs Bradley’s? I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Just a nice old stone house, she says, with a garden and stables and a garage. And she’s got a French cook and a French maid (husband and wife), and a Highland secretary….’
‘Who’s Laura, then?’
‘The secretary. Educated partly in England….’
‘You mean partly educated, don’t you?’
‘—and perfectly tame, although rather large and energetic. And we can do exactly as we like all the time. Exactly as we like.’
‘As long as we like the same things,’ said Roger grinning. ‘Do you think there’s any chance we might?’
There were various answers to this question, and there were those among them which Dorothy had half a mind to give. However, the kick on the head and his bandage had given him a pale and interesting appearance, and she found him, apart from this, not unattractive, so she compromised by smiling her secret smile and then observing:
‘I wouldn’t know. Would you?’
‘I could make a guess,’ said Roger. ‘Do you think we could stay until Tuesday, and then go under her wing to this damned inquest?’
‘You’re scared of it. Why?’ asked Dorothy.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Here’s the trolley. I don’t know where we have to change.’
‘Don’t you bother. I’ll find out.’
She was rather concerned at his blackened eyes and the listless expression of his mouth. She did not ask whether his head hurt him, but, having got him to his lodgings, she made him drink some tea and then lie on the bed and direct the packing of his suitcase. His landlady happened to be out, so they had the place to themselves, and left her a note when Mrs Bradley’s chauffeur, a respectable, kindly man, came up to the door and knocked for them.
Chapter Eleven
‘At length one chanced to find a nut,
In the end of which a hole was cut,
Which lay upon a hazel root,
There scattered by a squirrel
Which out the kernel gotten had;
When quoth this Fay, “Dear Queen, be glad;
Let Oberon be ne’er so mad,
I’ll set you safe from peril.”’
MICHAEL DRAYTON, Nymphidia: The Court of Fairy
CLAUDIA’S PANIC-STRICKEN LETTER broke upon the household at Wandles Parva just after the newspapers were delivered on Monday morning. Claudia stated that she knew she was going to be arrested for the murder of Harry Lingfield, and would be cautioned (‘in that loathsome way’) that anything she might choose to say would be taken down in writing and might be used in evidence.
Claudia’s response to this timely warning, she added wildly, would be—and the police could make the most of it—’I didn’t kill Harry, and you know it! I didn’t kill anybody, and anyhow, the dead man isn’t Harry, as I keep on telling you! In any case, it’s such nonsense to talk to me about his silly will! I didn’t want his money, and, even if I did, he hadn’t any!’
‘Which last fact,’ said Mrs Bradley, facing a wrathful Roger, an interested and very thoughtful Bob, and a non-committal Dorothy, ‘is quite true. I had it from the lawyers. There wasn’t a penny. Mr Lingfield had gradually drawn it all out, realized his shares, mortgaged his house and become increasingly in debt to his tailor and wine-merchant.’
‘Then she’s right!’ exclaimed Roger. ‘It isn’t Lingfield who’s dead!’
‘I’ve always thought she was right about that,’ said Bob. ‘Thing is now to produce him alive and well. I suppose that would put the candle-snuffers on the inspector.’
‘I still don’t see why they took Sim’s word rather than Mrs Denbies’,’ said Dorothy. ‘In any case, I don’t see how you could be sure of identifying a body without seeing the head.’
‘Oh, yes, you can,’ said Bob. ‘Wasn’t Mrs Crippen identified by one bit of skin with an appendicitis scar on it, or something?’
‘Well, I think I must go and support poor Claudia,’ said Mrs Bradley, rising. ‘You children, no doubt
, can find something to do whilst I’m gone.’
‘I’d like to come with you,’ said Bob. ‘I’d have to leave Wandles this afternoon, anyway, worse luck, as I must be at the office tomorrow. This lazy pair don’t have to work——’
‘Until Wednesday,’ said Roger, luxuriously. ‘All right, Bob. Be good, and so will we.’
‘Didn’t you want to go?’ enquired Dorothy, when they were on their way back after having seen the other two driven off by George the chauffeur in Mrs Bradley’s car.
‘I couldn’t do any good, you know,’ said Roger, scowling down at his shoes. ‘Mrs Bradley will be allowed to see her, I expect, if she’s arrested, but they wouldn’t have me as prisoner’s friend, or whatever it is called, I’m afraid. Poor Claudia! It’s all a damn’ shame! You don’t think she did do it, do you?’
‘I’m certain she didn’t. I was certain, I am certain, and I always shall be certain that Mrs Denbies couldn’t murder anyone. Besides, it was all too difficult.’
‘Too carefully planned, you mean? Yes, I think that, too. Whoever did it must have had it in mind for days; perhaps for months. The only snag is …’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, you see, if the body is Lingfield, and, although we don’t think it is, there doesn’t seem any way of proving that it isn’t—she had the motive; two motives, in fact, if you believe she didn’t know he hadn’t anything to leave her in his will. They had certainly quarrelled——’
‘Yes, I know, but so have you and I, and neither of us is in the least danger of being murdered by the other.’
‘Speak on your own behalf, dash it! Besides—well, our relationship isn’t exactly the same as theirs was, is it? I mean, they were as good as married. Had been for years, I imagine. Living together on and off, and that kind of thing, you know. I am wondering what will be said about that at the inquest.’
‘Yes.’ She was silent. Roger would have given a good deal to know her thoughts. He said, as they walked across the lawn:
‘What shall we do now they’ve gone?’
‘I wonder what Laura Menzies wants to do?’
‘Dash Laura! She’s got the dogs and a cat and things. She can’t have us as well.’
‘I thought she was head of the house in Mrs Bradley’s absence. Still, if you think she wouldn’t mind——’
‘Of course she won’t mind, chump! I loathe young Amazonian females, and this particular specimen makes me feel as though I’m ten years old and not more than a fly-weight at that.’
‘I wish I could make you feel ten years old. What were you like at ten?’
‘Do you mind not pressing that question? Ten is the average age of the fifteen little devils in my form, and I can’t think why my parents didn’t strangle me long before I was that age, if I was anything like those little blighters, and I’ve a horrible impression that I must have been.’
‘Then you can’t be feeling well,’ said Dorothy.
Laura Menzies, Mrs Bradley’s secretary, met them on the doorstep.
‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘I say, you two won’t want me, I trust? I’ve got stacks of work to do this morning, and I always go to bed on Monday afternoons to gather strength for the week. So do amuse yourselves, will you? I mean, I’m on tap if required, but if you don’t particularly mind——?’
Roger assured her firmly that they did not mind in the least, and she whistled the dogs and walked off. At twenty paces she paused, turned her head and added carelessly:
‘By the way, don’t bother about getting back to lunch if you’d sooner take sandwiches or something, and go out for a good long walk. It’s Monday, and I might as well give Henri the day off. There’s nothing to cook.’
Roger grasped at this delicate hint.
‘Sandwiches? Oh, rather. I say, thanks.’
‘I’ll tell Célestine, then, and you can rely on a really good dinner when you get back. The butcher will call at five. By the way, Mrs Croc. says I’m to warn you not to get lost. Have you got a map? I’ll get you one out of the library. Oh, and Mrs Croc. also says you’d better each take an ashplant if you’re going off the beaten track at all. There are half a dozen in the hall. Take your pick. Take two if you like.’
‘I suppose Mrs Bradley thinks my ankle may go back on me,’ said Roger, selecting a stick with care. ‘I say, this might almost be my own old ashplant, don’t you think? Remember our discussion on the bus that first day about superstitions and so forth?’
‘It doesn’t seem possible that it was such a short time ago,’ said Dorothy. She glanced out at the pleasant spring sunshine and shivered as though she were cold. ‘I said something horrid would happen that day, and it did! I only hope——’
‘What?’
‘That ashplants are not unlucky.’
‘Well, the ash does have a bad name in witchcraft, I believe—almost as bad as the elm. Did you ever read a story by Montagu Rhodes James——?’
Discussion and mutual appreciation of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary lasted them for the first two miles of their walk. There was no doubt, thought Dorothy, that Roger, when not slavering around after women old enough to be his mother, was quite a companionable young man.
The country round Wandles Parva was pleasantly wooded. Roger and Dorothy strolled through the village along the main road which ran between Bossbury and London and went as far as Culminster Station before they struck off through the fields and woods, proposing to work round to the great park of the Manor House. In this park was the famous Druid Stone, sole survivor of what may have been a complete circle of trilithons or sarcen-stones. By the twentieth century, however, nothing remained save this one sinister, ugly, toad-like altar-stone, itself the sacrificial block in a local murder not more than twenty years old. A nineteenth-century owner of the manor house had planted a circle of pine trees around the Stone, and the place was reputed to be haunted. Roger and Dorothy, who had heard of the Stone from Mrs Bradley, were both very anxious to see it.
Once through the village they struck away from the highway and took to the common which adjoined it. The land here was open heath and birches, with occasional outcroppings of gravel and with little paths which seemed to have no particular beginning, purpose or destination, but which went running and winding up small rises and down long shallow depressions and then lost themselves among heather roots or in a gorse bush.
‘Different from our last long walk,’ said Roger. They kept the main road in sight and the woods round Wandles Parva at their backs, and came, at the end of an hour of easy walking, to Culminster, a little place where the railway branched to the south and west at a station which seemed disproportionate to the little grey stone town in which it stood.
They visited the Norman church and an ancient priory nearby, and then turned off to the north. This would bring them round in a circle to the Druid’s Stone.
‘It’s a queer thing,’ said Roger, after they had followed a little stream through a flat field into some woods, ‘but I don’t quite fancy these trees. Does it seem to you that there’s somebody dodging and hiding?’
‘Probably the village idiot,’ said Dorothy, trying to speak lightly but aware of a most unpleasant sensation of fear. She, no less than Roger, had been aware of the uneasy atmosphere of the wood.
‘You’ve noticed it, then?’
‘I thought it was just my fancy.’
‘That proves it isn’t just mine. Look here, if it’s that fellow Sim, I’m going to have it out with him once and for all. I’m sick of having that blighter trailing around.’
‘But surely he wouldn’t follow us down here? How could he know where we were?’
‘That I don’t know, but, if you don’t mind being left alone for five minutes as soon as we come to a clearing, I’m going to make it my business to find out what he’s up to.’
Dorothy disliked intensely the idea of being left alone, but she did not say so. Instead, as soon as they came to a clearing where woodmen had been at work and there were some fallen tree-trun
ks, she seated herself and said casually:
‘Don’t be long, and please don’t get lost and not be able to find me again. I’ve never really liked the thought of being the Babes in the Wood.’
‘Righto,’ said Roger with equal casualness. ‘I hope the blighter hasn’t got a gun!’
He walked away into the smoke-green woods and left her alone with the tall pink willow-herbs, the wood anemones and her thoughts. He returned in a quarter of an hour.
‘Mistaken,’ he said briefly, seating himself beside her and filling his pipe. ‘Nobody there. I’ve searched thoroughly. It’s only a very small wood. We must be suffering from nerves.’
He was annoyed with himself, and they continued their walk in silence, both conscious, however, that the feeling they had of being shadowed was becoming, if anything, even more pronounced. Roger broke away twice to make a sudden raid into bushes, but came back moodily each time.
‘I shan’t be sorry to get back to the house,’ said Dorothy.
‘I agree,’ he said. ‘All right. Let’s cut out the monolith, and get back to the main road, shall we?’
‘I hate going back the same way.’
Both laughed, remembering the last time she had said the same thing, and then both grew sober.
‘If we had gone back the same way, we wouldn’t have got all mixed up with this headless body,’ said Roger. ‘But neither would we have had this week-end together. I tell you what—we’ll toss. Fate shall decide for us.’
‘It will, in any case,’ said Dorothy, not without pessimism. ‘Heads we go on, and tails we go back.’
‘It’s heads.’
‘Oh! Oh, is it? Oh, well, I’m not really sorry. This is the prettier way.’
They tramped on, came out of the wood at last, and then followed a bridle-path in a long sweep north-westwards until they had encircled the Manor House. The last part of the walk had lain across open country, and, finding it perfectly empty, their spirits had revived and they were glad they had not given in to their nerves and imaginations.
Time and the war had wrought changes since Mrs Bradley had first come to live in the Stone House at Wandles Parva. For one thing, the Manor House had ceased to be privately owned. It had been purchased by the local council and later had been commandeered by the Army. With the coming of peace, the council had taken it over again, the Druid’s Stone had become a goal for sightseers, and a right of way had been made between the Manor park and the vicarage lane.
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