The Dancing Druids

Chapter Eight

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‘ “Not for gold or silver; but for flesh and blood.” ’

Ibid. (The Lady and the Lion)

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To-morrow morning, however,’ Mrs. Bradley continued, ‘we had better rise early, as we arranged to do, and visit the villages of Easey and Newcombe Soulbury. We will ask silly questions and demand unobtainable information. So many earnest persons do this nowadays, many of them sponsored by the government, that I don’t suppose we shall seem remarkable. What information shall we seek?’

‘Let’s fish about with the local history,’ suggested Laura. ‘No! I’ll tell you what! We could be archaeologists, trying to find out where to get permission to dig. That will give us a chance to excavate the corpses if those people really have been murdered. What do you say to that for an idea?’

Mrs. Bradley gazed at her secretary in congratulatory amazement.

‘I don’t know how you think of these things,’ she said. Laura looked at her suspiciously, but Mrs. Bradley added, as though she had taken the suggestion seriously, ‘But I think that digging will be far more useful a little later on, child.’

‘Ah! “Plant her where she’ll blossom,” ’ observed Laura. ‘I get it. Right. We become archaeologists (and dig up the corpses) later. Meanwhile we are literary tourists with an insatiable thirst for Hardy-ana. That’s the best bet in this county.’

‘No, no. We will seek the birthplace of William Barnes, child. With any luck we shall be able to lunch in Cuchester and can then complete our round before dinner. And you’d better drive. They may recognize George at those places he visited before.’

‘Time Marches On,’ observed Laura, feeling slightly guilty at the thought that she had taken George to Slepe Rock that afternoon. However, next day she took the wheel and the car drove off towards what she privately termed The House in Dormer Forest. This was the place from which the young man Allwright, or, as he had preferred it, Toro, had disappeared in 1939. Mrs. Bradley had decided to go first to Easey on the theory that people might remember the events of 1939 more readily than those of 1930 and 1921.

Thanks to the clear directions supplied by George, Laura found the cottage at Easey and pulled up twenty yards away. It was true that the cottage was concealed in a small wood, but there was nothing either mysterious or sinister about the neat lawn, neat flowerbeds, neat curtains and neat front door. Even the notice-board was neat with its unobstrusive intimation that the property was for sale.

‘A great thought strikes me,’ said Laura.

‘I thought perhaps it would,’ Mrs. Bradley remarked.

‘Headquarters.’

‘I thought you might suggest that, but we need not be in a hurry.’

‘Shall I go and enquire, or will you?’

‘You go. But don’t do anything at present except ask whether we may take a photograph.’

‘Mentioning Barnes’ birthplace?’

‘Not until you have permission to take the photograph, otherwise they will tell you that you have come to the wrong place and close the door on you.’

‘What a Machiavelli!’ said Laura. ‘You ought to have been a lawyer. Well, here goes!’

The door was opened by a middle-aged woman whose respectable black hat, apron worn under her coat and large shopping bag indicated a charwoman about to return to her own home after having ‘obliged.’

‘Photygraph?’ she said doubtfully. ‘I don’t know. I’ll arst, but they’m only holiday folks.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Laura. ‘Well, perhaps if they’d give permission…’

A girl’s voice said from one of the inner doorways :

‘What is it, Mrs. Bird?’

‘Nothing, miss, only trippers,’ replied the charwoman.

‘Well, they can have some water for their kettle or whatever it is, but we can’t give them cups of tea.’

‘They want to take a photygraph of the ’ouse, miss.’

‘Oh, they can do that, of course. It doesn’t sound like trippers to ask!’

‘We’re not trippers!’ said Laura. The girl emerged. ‘I mean, not in the sense of paper and bottles and broken glass and catching gorse alight and all that. We thought the cottage rather a beauty, actually, and are doing research and that sort of thing, you know.’

‘Well, you can take the photograph, of course,’ said the girl. ‘All right, Mrs. Bird, you go home. Did you take the dripping you wanted?’

‘Thank you, yes, miss.’ The charwoman left. The girl watched her until she reached the gate and then turned abruptly to Laura.

‘You’re not the police, are you?’ she asked. ‘Because we’ve had them all over the house already this week.’

‘Oh!’ said Laura, rather blankly. ‘Oh, have you? All we wanted was the photograph and just to ask whether you knew anything of the history of the cottage.’

‘No, we don’t. We’ve only been here six weeks. I know the last owner disappeared, but that’s nothing to do with us.’

‘Oh—I see. I hope I haven’t been a nuisance. It was only…’

‘Oh, that’s all right. But my father’s a semi-invalid, and the visit of the police upset him.’

Laura was longing to know what the police had given as the reason of their visit, but did not care to ask. She took her leave, and realized that she and Mrs. Bradley were being watched from the windows as they took the photograph from the middle of the garden path.

‘Hm!’ said Laura, shutting up the camera, waving her hand towards the girl at the window, and following Mrs. Bradley back to the car. ‘Not much to be got out of her! I didn’t bother to mention Barnes’ birthplace. There seemed no point.’

‘The cottage was charming,’ Mrs. Bradley remarked. ‘We must find out whether the police have any information about the inhabitants. I anticipate, however, that the girl will be as innocent as she looks and sounds. Yet… police all over the house!’ She chuckled grimly. ’Mr. O’Hara’s story must have impressed the Chief Constable deeply. I wonder why?’

‘It sounds as though the police know something,’ said Laura in dissatisfied tones, as though the police had been guilty of sharp practice. ‘Will you be able to find out what it is?’

‘I doubt it, child. Besides, I imagine that the lines of investigation followed by the police and ourselves ultimately will be widely different. Swallow your disappointment and let us go on to Newcombe Soulbury, where, perchance, we shall meet with good-fortune.’

Laura cheered up at once, and observed, with complete lack of civic morality, that there, at any rate, she proposed to be one jump ahead of the police whatever she had to risk to accomplish this.

The second village lay west by south of Easey, but it could not be reached by car by any very direct route, and Laura, who had to drive twenty-two miles in order to arrive once more on the circumference of her nine-mile circle, had been right in believing that it would not be possible to have walked to Newcombe Soulbury from the Nine Stones. A couple of miles, at last, up a long steep hill brought them to the home of the missing Mr. Battle, whose disappearance dated from 1930.

‘I can see the studio,’ said Laura. ‘It seems as though disappearing from home is a foible confined to painters. Is that so?’

‘I have no statistics,’ said Mrs. Bradley, getting out of the car and walking towards the cottage, ‘but it is a point which ought to be kept in mind during this enquiry.’

‘Probably only coincidence that both these chaps were painters,’ said Laura. ’The county must be lousy with artists, with all this scenery about.’

The cottage was double-fronted and, built on to it, they discovered, at the back, was a long room, uncurtained, and containing a bar counter. One or two bottles stood on shelves at the back of the bar, the bare floor was of polished boards, and a piano stood in one corner.

They took all this in, and then Mrs. Bradley said loudly (for she saw that they were under observation from an upstair window at the back of the house) :

‘I don’t think this can be the place.’

The window was opened, and a head came out.

‘Did you want anything?’ it demanded.

‘We came to see the birthplace,’ said Laura. The window was closed, and soon a large, untidy-looking, handsome woman opened the back door and came out to them. She appeared to be about forty years old.

‘Can I direct you anywhere?’ she demanded in a truculent tone.

‘Yes, please. We are looking for the birthplace of William Barnes,’ said Mrs. Bradley, briskly.

‘Then you’d better look somewhere else,’ the woman replied. ‘This is a private house.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Laura, hoping for a hint from Mrs. Bradley. ‘We thought, perhaps…’

‘Well, it isn’t,’ said the woman. ‘And the bar is not for customers. It’s a freak idea of my husband’s, and my husband doesn’t like strangers.’

Mrs. Bradley touched Laura’s arm, and, under the hostile gaze of the handsome, blowsey-looking creature, they moved towards the gate.

‘Hasn’t helped much,’ said Laura, opening the door of the car for her employer. ‘What a model for Augustus John, though! I should think she’d be lovely if she took the trouble, wouldn’t you?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘And I do not agree that our visit hasn’t helped. Do not be in a hurry to start the car. Could you look inside the bonnet or something for a minute?’

It was whilst Laura was carrying out these instructions that the garden gate opened and the woman came out to them.

‘Are you going into Newcombe?’ she enquired.

‘Is that the same as Newcombe Soulbury?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired. ‘If so…’

‘Yes, of course it’s the same! And… and William Barnes was born at a place called Rushay, the other side of Blandford, miles from here. And his statue is in Dorchester churchyard. There’s nothing about him round here.’

Mrs. Bradley took out a small address book, and wrote Rushay.

‘Thank you so much, Mrs. Battle,’ she said carelessly, putting the book away. The woman was obviously startled.

‘Battle?… Oh, you mean the people who used to live here! I… did you know them at all?’

‘I knew of Battle the painter, of course,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘I assumed, from your manner and appearance, that you were his wife… or perhaps (forgive me!) his widow.’ His disappearance was a great loss to art. The police, I am credibly informed, are looking into it again. But, of course, they will have been here before us.’

‘The police?’ said the woman. ‘Oh, but I could tell them nothing about David! They would have to go to the son, young David Battle. Not that he would know any more than I do. I wonder…?’

‘Yes, Mrs. Battle?’

‘But I’m not Mrs. Battle!’ cried the woman. ‘And I tell you I know nothing of David’s affairs. And I’m afraid I must ask you to go. My husband will be home at any moment. If you want to see David—the son, I mean, of course—he lives in Cuchester now. I don’t know the address, but perhaps you could ask at the Post Office.’

‘You were asking whether we were returning by way of the village,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Yes, we are.’

‘Oh, yes, well…’ She hesitated and then plunged. ‘Would you post a letter for me there? You’ll see the Post Office. Just the village shop.’

‘Most certainly we will post your letter,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘It must be a great disadvantage to be so far from the village unless you have a car.’

‘We have a car. My husband is using it. Thank you so much. ’

She went back into the house, and was gone for some time.

‘Writing the letter, I should think,’ said Laura, abandoning her inspection of the engine and taking the driver’s seat once more. The woman came out with the letter and Mrs. Bradley and Laura drove away.

‘Well!’ said Laura, as the car went slowly downhill towards Newcombe Soulbury village. ‘And what do we make of her, I wonder?’

‘It is too early to be certain,’ Mrs. Bradley replied, ‘but I should not be surprised if I were right, and that she is the older David Battle’s second wife, and that he has not, in the sense that we understand it, “disappeared” at all, but has merely gone underground for his own purposes. And I am truly sorry to disappoint you again, but I have a strong feeling that the police have been there before us, that they have alarmed the Battles, and that the letter we are to post in Newcombe Soulbury contains information relating to our visit. And now we will try Slepe Rock.’

Once they had turned off the main road, their route lay among hills. Great, round-headed slopes lay on either side of the way and rose to meet the car as it headed towards the sea.

Slepe Rock itself was on the seaward side of the village of Slepe, a straggling little place with a poor-looking bungalow or two on its outskirts, some untidy cottages, a house turned into a shop, and a large garage. Laura had seen nothing of the village on her hill-track pilgrimage to Slepe, but had passed through it on the return journey in the car.

Beyond the village was the bay (once, as George had surmised, a smuggler’s hole), some limestone caves, a wash of creaming water, like teeth, breaking the surface of the sea, a semi-circle of cliff, a coastguard’s hut, and, just where the beach widened to include, between pebbles and backwash, a strip of dirty sand, the refreshment shack of which they were in search.

‘Not much future in this,’ said Laura decidedly. She regarded Slepe Rock with disfavour. ‘I enjoyed my walk over the hills, but, seen from this angle, Slepe Rock is a beastly little place! It’s like Lulworth Cove gone hellish. Why should anyone want to live here?—or wasn’t it like this when the disappearing Bulstrode lived here?’

It was a question which Mrs. Bradley could not answer.

‘The cottage must have been near the sea,’ she observed, ‘if George’s report is correct, and I have no doubt whatever that it is.’ She surveyed Slepe with a non-committal eye, and added, ‘I think, child, that we ought to put up at the hotel. I wish your David Gavin were here with us. A young inspector of police could extract more information from a barmaid in the space of a quarter of an hour than you or I would be likely to get in a year and a half.’

‘O’Hara and Gascoigne,’ said Laura, quickly. ‘They’d love to help, and they can’t be doing anything important, and, after all, they got us into this!’

‘An excellent idea,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘but I have doubts about Mr. O’Hara. I don’t want him to run into danger on our account.’

‘He wouldn’t mind danger,’ said Laura, ‘and, after all, it’s because of him that we’re going to all this trouble.’

‘True,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. Gascoigne, however, came alone, explaining that his cousin had gone over to Ireland to a wedding, but would be coming back later and would join them then. He asked what he could do to help the enquiry.

‘We want to find out,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘all that we can about the house which used to exist on the site of that shack beside the pull-in for coaches. We want to know why the house was taken down, who lived there, what happened to him, and we need any other information which happens to come to light. You shall pursue boatmen and compliment barmaids. You shall indulge in friendly chat with the hotel manager and pass the time of day with the men who work at the pull-in for coaches.’

The god-like Gascoigne promised to do his best, and Laura announced her intention of keeping a close watch on the hotel guests.

‘You never know,’ she said. ‘It won’t take the villain of the piece very long to find out that we’re on his track, and he might come here to keep an eye on us.’

‘But we don’t know for certain that there is a villain, do we?’ Gascoigne enquired.

‘Well, there must be,’ said Laura bluntly, ‘or Mrs. Bradley wouldn’t be here wasting her time.’