“I have devoted some small amount of time to research into the subject. I suppose the Stone of Sacrifice is some part of the answer. Do you believe in fairies?”
“Wandles? Wands? Strange goings-on round the Stone by the lee light of the moon? Possible, I suppose.” The drive back to Wandles Parva was completed in silence. When they reached the Stone House, Laura suddenly asked:
“Why the Manor House again? Just because Phlox was haunting it in that peculiar fashion this morning?”
Dame Beatrice leered affectionately at her and suggested a visit to the Manor on the following afternoon.
“Why afternoon?” asked Dame Beatrice in the tone that Laura had used. “Because we shall not be likely to encounter Phlox Carmichael at that time. I have rung up the vicarage and told Veronica Pierce to see that the vicar and his guest do a little more work on their Roman road. With Phlox out of the way, we may be able to obtain valuable information without the embarrassment of being followed or overlooked.”
“Good. That man always did give me the creeps and now that we suspect him of two murders and you hint at the possibility of a third, I feel I know why.”
“Would you describe his posture on the Stone as ritualistic?”
“You put the word into my mouth, and that isn’t fair. It makes it a leading question.”
“But why not? You gave a very vivid description of him, and you said, if you remember . . .”
“Well, he did seem rather noticeable.”
“Do you think he was attempting to align the summer solstice?”
“Well, the Stone and those pine trees must mean something, mustn’t they?”
“Time, which settles all things, will settle that. Meanwhile, let us ring up our dear Robert again and see how the police are getting on.”
“Interested in your information about the accident to Marigold Carmichael,” said Gavin. “We went along to the house-boat to have a look round and I called on the very spiteful lady next door. The gang-plank is busted up all right, but it gives our experts the impression of having been damaged deliberately. The spiteful lady wasn’t helpful, as she wasn’t in residence when the accident occurred, and if anybody along the moorings knows anything, he or she is keeping very quiet about it. However, we’ve got a bit of a lead. We’ve found the doctor whom Phlox called in, and from him we’ve got the name of the hospital. I’m going along there now. I rang them up and they say Marigold is recovered sufficiently to answer a few questions, but that she’s had a bad shock and must be treated tenderly. I’ll come down to Wandles if there’s anything interesting to report, By the way, don’t either you or Laura go gallivanting about the neighbourhood alone. If your hunch is right, and the Manor House is the answer to one of our problems, Phlox may take fright and try to shut your mouths. If what we think about him is true, he’s a very ugly customer indeed and he’s got nothing to lose once he’s been rumbled.”
He rang off and went to the hospital attended by a shorthand writer, Police Sergeant Glimm. All was in readiness for them. Marigold was in a private room with a young nurse in attendance and looked more mouse-like than ever. She turned her head away when the officers came in and told the nurse, in a weak voice, that she could not be bothered with visitors. Both men were in plain clothes, but, although the hospital had been asked not to announce them as policemen but to leave Gavin to supply this information in the least disturbing manner possible, there seemed no doubt that she had guessed at once what they were.
“We just want a few details about your accident, Miss Carmichael,” said Gavin kindly. “We shan’t trouble you for long, and the nurse will be here all the time, you know. There’s nothing to worry about. We must just know what happened, that’s all.”
“You’re policemen.”
“Quite true, but that need not alarm you, surely.”
“I don’t see why you’ve come. It was just an accident, as you said. There is nothing to tell you.”
“Did you know that the gang-plank was unsafe?”
“It’s been that way for months. It simply collapsed, that’s all.”
“Not quite all, I think. Who took an axe to it?”
“Phlox did.”
“Oh, really? What was his idea?”
“He was angry and upset with it for letting me fall into the river. He revenged himself on it.”
“Then how did he get back on to the house-boat after he had pulled you out of the water?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t in a fit state to know anything.”
“No, I don’t suppose you were. Is your house-boat insured?”
“I suppose so. I know nothing about business matters.”
“How many times has your brother been to see you in hospital?”
“He brought me here in a hired car. The doctor gave him a letter to admit me as a casualty.”
“Have you been in this private room all the time?”
“Of course. I can easily afford it. We have lots of money, Phlox and I. How much do you want to go away and stop bothering me?”
Gavin nodded to the sergeant and they departed. Marigold had not once looked in their direction.
“Shielding this brother of hers?” asked the sergeant.
“It’s as plain as the nose on my face,” Gavin agreed, referring to a handsome feature which his wife had often derided, “but there simply isn’t anything to go on. We’ve combed out those moorings, to the annoyance and inconvenience of one and all, and haven’t got a thing. Still, now she’s confessed that Carmichael took an axe to that gang-plank, I may be able to persuade somebody to talk. The next thing after that will be an interview with the gentleman himself, and this time I shan’t handle him too tenderly.”
Back in his office he rang Dame Beatrice again and said that he would be down on the following day but had not much news.
“Jolly good,” said Laura heartlessly. “That means they’re no further on than we are. What price the observation tower? I say, my thoughts suddenly run on strange lines!”
“Strangely enough, my own thoughts were running along those same lines, I fancy.”
“You don’t really think . . . Good Lord! That’s quite an idea! ‘Boot, saddle, to horse and away’—what?”
“A visit to the vicarage first, I rather fancy, to make certain that Phlox Carmichael is not likely to be at the Manor House to greet us.”
They arrived at the vicarage to find that the vicar and Phlox were out, but that Veronica was at home and was dusting the drawing-room. She greeted them cordially.
“I was just going to have a cup of coffee,” she said. “Do sit down. As I can see that you’ve come about something rather special, I can’t wait to hear what it is.”
“I understand that Mr. Carmichael is staying here again,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Like his cheek, expecting me to look after him,” said the vicar’s wife. “But, of course, we’re glad to have his money. I don’t know why it is, but we always seem fairly quiet between now and the end of July—not that I ever encourage people to bring their brats here. Life is quite sufficiently complicated without having it cluttered up with children.”
“You always have Hamish when I want to get rid of him,” said Laura.
“Oh, Hamish! He’s a cherub.”
“Blimey!” said the mother of Hamish, with deep feeling. “Anyway, what about Phlox Carmichael?”
“He’s thrown himself on our mercy. It appears that Marigold fell into the Thames and was nearly drowned.”
“Probably not his fault she wasn’t quite drowned,” said Laura darkly. “What’s he really here for?”
“He’s lonely.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Well, that’s his story and it’s very likely true. They’re genuinely fond of one another, you know. I mean, he’d really hate anything to happen to Marigold.”
“Yes, unless she threatened his safety. Marigold strikes me as the sort of person who could be persuaded to talk.”
“Not against Phlox
, believe me. They’ve stayed here several times now, and I should say that they’re devoted to one another.”
Laura glanced at Dame Beatrice, but her employer seemed unwilling to join in the conversation, so Laura, having received no sign that she was to do the contrary, went on talking.
“I still don’t see why Phlox should come down here,” she said. “Which hospital is Marigold in?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say. Does it matter?”
“No, not really, but I should have thought he’d want to be near her, if he’s as fond of her as he pretends, that’s all. It seems very odd to me that he should come away like this.”
“Yes, there is that,” Veronica admitted, “but men are peculiar in that way. Unless they’re ill themselves, they seem to hate anything to do with sick people, and I don’t suppose Phlox is any exception.”
“I see that, of course, but there are such things as visiting days.”
“Oh, dear!” said Veronica. “You somehow make it sound all wrong, and I’m sure it isn’t. I don’t like him, of course. I never have.”
“A sound instinct, and I certainly don’t think that burying himself down here while she’s in hospital is anything to his credit. Still, it takes all kinds to make a world, I suppose. Where is he now?”
“He and Gascony have taken the car and gone to have another look—they’ve both seen it before—at the Roman villa at Chedworth. They’ll be away all day. They took sandwiches and a thermos.”
“Splendid,” said Dame Beatrice. She finished her coffee, waited while Laura and Veronica drank a second cup, and then suggested that she should “be getting along,” a suggestion with which Laura immediately agreed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Manor House
“Search while thou wilt, and let thy Reason go To ransome Truth, even to th’ Abyss below.”
Ibid (Section 13)
* * *
THE original manor house had been built in the fifteenth century and had been burnt down early in the reign of King Henry VII. The family moved to another estate in Kent and did not rebuild at Wandles until the eighteenth century, when a nabob of the East India Company enriched himself at Calcutta, came home and purchased the land and the ruins from a distant cousin of the same surname, rebuilt the house, and lived in it. His son gambled away the fortune and killed himself, leaving no heir. Subsequently the widow sold up, but the new owner disliked the house, believing it to be haunted, and soon gave up living in it.
Neglected, the house fell into decay and when, during the late nineteenth century, the owner of the title deeds decided to live there, he also decided that the only thing to do was to pull down the fabric and rebuild. This he did, in a neo-Gothic style at once impressive and hideous. The eighteenth-century observation tower he retained. He had it shored up and made safe and it became a favourite place of his when he grew tired of the society of his wife and children.
Since the park and mansion had passed into the care of the County authority, the house and the observation tower had been locked up. Village boys had stoned the windows of the house and explored inside it, stripping off wall-paper and writing dirty words on the plaster, but the tower had slits for windows which admitted only just enough light to prevent the stairs, which led to the roof, from being a death-trap.
Dame Beatrice and Laura drove up to the locked front gates of the park and left the car there by the park-keeper’s lodge. Then Laura shouted until the park-keeper’s daughter came out to see what was wanted. The great ornamental gates remained closed.
“Dame Beatrice wants the key to the old tower. I suppose you’ve got it somewhere, Daisy, haven’t you?” said Laura.
“The key? To the old tower? Why, that’s a haunted tower, so they say.”
“Very likely. Get me the key and I’ll tell you whether it is, or not, when I get back.”
“I don’t like to lend it, not without our dad’s leave, I don’t.”
“It’s been lent before, I think,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Only to vicar, mam.”
“Then it can be lent to me.”
“You’ll have to take responsibility, then.”
“Of course.” So the girl disappeared inside the lodge and the visitors waited nearly five minutes before she came out again with a massive key.
“I’m not honestly sure it’s the one,” she said. “You’d have to try. You’ll have to go round to the wicket-gate. These big gates is kept padlocked, I don’t know for why.”
“Keep an eye on the car,” said Laura, handing over half a crown in exchange for the key. “I’ve no idea how long we shall be. Talking of which,” she added to Dame Beatrice, as they walked away, “I’m jolly glad I ate such an enormous lunch. It’s nearly three o’clock.”
“We shall be back in time for dinner, if not for tea.”
It took them ten minutes to follow the park wall round to the wicket-gate but then they were soon among the trees and walking towards the Stone. They stopped (automatically, it seemed) to look at it.
“Ugly brute!” said Laura. “By the way, it was pretty significant, I thought, that the vicar once borrowed the key, because that means he borrowed it so that Phlox Carmichael could visit and climb the tower. You know, I can’t help wondering how long the vicar had the key.”
“An interesting thought. Your ideas are indeed attuned to mine.”
They passed the lake in which Laura had bathed, and approached the Manor House. Dame Beatrice was making straight for the observation tower, but Laura said:
“Let’s try the house first. I’ve never been inside, and it will be easy enough to get in, with all those broken windows. I’ll reconnoitre, shall I? It might be best to try the back of the house. I’m not terribly anxious to cut myself on broken glass.”
She stalked away, and Dame Beatrice lost sight of her round the corner of the building and stood in contemplation of the lake until she heard the sound of bolts being drawn. The front door opened and Laura said:
“Kitchen window was right out. Come on. Let’s take a look-see.”
There was nothing of particular interest, however. The house was extremely dirty, not only from an accumulation of dust and cobwebs, but also from the residue, sometimes disgusting, of human trespassers. A tramp had camped in the drawing-room at some time, the village boys appeared to have taken an active interest in the premises, too, and the general impression was, to say the least, unlovely.
They ascended the stairs, to find even more ruin, dirt, and desolation than in the downstair rooms. There remained the conservatory, which led out of the drawing-room and which they had not explored.
“Lord!” exclaimed Laura, halting on the threshold. “Shades of Macbeth!”
The conservatory walls, which were mostly of glass but which had white wooden panelling to a height of three feet with white wooden shelves for potted plants, were splashed ominously with brownish stains. Dame Beatrice shook her head.
“I doubt it,” she said, “but we will help ourselves to a sample for analysis.” She took a penknife from her skirt pocket and delicately prised off a sliver of the panelling on which the stains were particularly well marked. “And now for the tower,” she said. She put her prize in a large envelope which she drew, carefully folded, from her skirt pocket (where it had lain inside the cover of a small, stiff-covered notebook), marked the envelope in the top corner with the date and the words Manor Wandles Conservatory and hid it under a layer of the bone-dry gravel which covered the conservatory shelves. “We can pick that up on our return,” she said. “Come along.”
Laura, carrying the key, led the way. It was about fifty yards from the house to the tower, by an overgrown path to the stables, and, from there, through a creaking, wide-swinging, battered and broken wooden door to a small shrubbery of neglected rhododendrons. Laura parted a way between two of the bushes and plunged through a wilderness of greater willow-herb to the foot of the tower.
“I will go first,” sa
id Dame Beatrice, holding out a skinny claw for the key. Laura yielded it obediently and her employer inserted it in the lock. It turned with unexpected ease.
“Oiled!” exclaimed Laura. “We’re on the trail!”
Dame Beatrice did not reply. She pushed the door open and extracted the key, which she dropped into her pocket. She had brought a small electric torch, but found that it would not be needed. The very small windows were placed at frequent intervals up the outside wall of the tower and at some time, apparently fairly recently, had been rubbed over on the inside and gave sufficient light to the stair.
Laura counted the steps to the top, which was partly closed by an iron platform rather similar to the platform at the top of the look-out mast of a liner. Dame Beatrice avoided bumping her head, insinuated herself into the aperture, and climbed out into the open air. Laura followed and found herself in the sunshine once again, but, considerably less pleasingly, also in the presence of decay.
“Hilary Beads, I think,” said Dame Beatrice, gazing with apparent unconcern at the unsavoury relict on the roof. “I’ll stay here with her while you go and telephone the police.”
“Vice versa?” asked Laura heroically. Her employer vigorously shook her head.
“I shall be happier alone here than you would be,” she responded. Laura did not attempt to conceal her relief.
“Good-oh,” she said, and lowered herself down the stair. Dame Beatrice, stepping past the corpse, went to the parapet and watched her secretary out of sight. Then she also went down the tower staircase, locked the door behind her, and strolled back to the house. Here she made a far more thorough and careful search than she had allowed herself to do while Laura was with her, and presently she found a door which, opening on to a flight of stone steps, led down to the cellar.
Here her torch was necessary. She switched it on, descended the steps, and began to explore. It was a commodious cellar and ran under four rooms so that it formed a kind of suite, one space opening out of another by means of an archway the width of a fairly wide door.
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