The Dancing Druids

Chapter Eleven

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‘Who they are that have come to live there I cannot tell, but I am sure it looks more dark and gloomy than ever, and some queer-looking beings are to be seen lurking about it every night, as I am told.’

Ibid. (The Elfin-Grove)

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Laura went for her first sitting accompanied by her employer. She went unwillingly and under orders, but regained her good temper when she discovered that Battle was prepared to chat to her whilst he made his preliminary sketch.

‘The thing that stands out a mile,’ she remarked to Mrs. Bradley when they had returned to Slepe Rock, ‘is that this Battle loathed his father with the deep and intense sort of loathing which would very likely lead to murder. And you know what he said when you asked him whether he had murdered him!’

‘Yes. He said he had often thought of it, but that he was no more than a child when his father left him and disappeared. We must admit that he would have been rather young, at the time of his father’s disappearance, to make an effective murderer, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve read of kids murdering people. Morbid kids, and those sort of half-baked ones that nowadays you’d get a psychiatrist to look over.’

‘Even supposing that he did kill his father, do you think that, at the age of eleven or twelve, he could have contrived to hide the body so that the police could never find it?’

‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Well, anyway…’

‘And if he had murdered him and hoodwinked everybody so successfully, would he still hate him quite so fiercely? Would not his attitude be different from what it is? And wouldn’t he have some plausible story to account for his father’s disappearance? He merely states that he hated him and doesn’t want him back.’

‘All right, all right. I withdraw. But he seems quite a murderer to me, but then, of course, I dislike him.’

Mrs. Bradley forbore to contest these unreasonable and unscientific views, chiefly because she agreed with them. She was interested to learn that Laura held them, however, and enquired:

‘What else do you think of him, I wonder?’

‘I don’t think anything. By the way, he wanted to charge me so much an hour for the sittings, but I wasn’t going to agree. I might have to go a dozen times. I believe in piecework from painters.’

‘I heard the conversation, and am also aware that you lent him two pounds,’ said Mrs. Bradley, with a slight but appreciative cackle.

‘Oh, that’s all right, because, if he doesn’t sub up, I shall simply knock it off his bill,’ said Laura hastily.

‘You are prudence and foresight personified. But let us, before we go further, make an inventory of what we know. First, we have two painters and a poet. Three painters, if we count this young Battle. There ought to be something significant about that, as you would say.’

‘All creative artists?’

‘Very well. We have four creative artists, three of whom disappeared without trace. Secondly, we have the odd and possibly significant fact that these disappearances seem to be on a cycle of nine years.’

‘Thirdly,’ said Laura, ‘the disappearances seem to take place nine miles from the place where O’Hara’s fat man was last seen. Fourthly, there seems to be no sort of motive for the disappearances so far as we know at present. Fifthly—is there a fifthly?’

‘There is. You should keep your eyes open and apply your knowledge, child. Fifthly, there are two seventeenth-century carved picture frames in David Battle’s rooms, and there is a wonderful pseudo-Old Crome on the walls of the Cuchester picture dealer.’

‘Painted by David Battle. What about it? And, of course, we shall discover that David’s father disappeared in September because, although I never realized it until now, September is the ninth month of the year! So that would settle it.’

‘And the month is still September, said Mrs. Bradley. ‘I wonder…’

Laura waited a minute, but Mrs. Bradley left the sentence unfinished. Laura decided to prompt her.

‘You wonder what? she said. Mrs. Bradley shook her head.

‘A passing thought, that’s all, child, and quite a foolish one, no doubt.’

‘Don’t be aggravating,’ said Laura. ‘You’re not the only person who dislikes harvest festivals, but I don’t mind mentioning my dislikes.’

At this startling piece of thought-reading Mrs. Bradley cackled loudly. Her secretary grinned.

‘You know, what we ought to do, as I see it at present, is to go to the stone circle every night and hide ourselves, and wait and watch in case the Druids dance. And do you know what I think about that?—I’ve been thinking it over, and I perceive a secret society behind all this, you know.’

‘A what?’ said Mrs. Bradley sharply.

‘Oh,’ said Laura, waving a shapely palm, ‘I’ve been doing a good deal of solid considering since Mike O’Hara and Gerry Gascoigne came to us with that story, and, as I see it, there’s a kidnapping gang at work. The gang is nine strong, operates at nine-yearly intervals, holds some sort of horrid festival in the ninth month of each ninth year, and captures people who live on a nine-mile radius from their centre of operations, which is the nine-stone circle to which O’Hara helped them take that fat man. How else can you work it all out?’

Mrs. Bradley was lost in amazement, and gazed rather anxiously at her secretary.

‘Are you feeling quite well, child?’ she enquired. Laura strode to the hotel window and looked out on to the sea.

‘It’s going to blow,’ she said. She watched the rollers come combing across the bay, and then turned to face her employer. ‘You may laugh,’ she went on, ‘but there’s something behind all this—I know there is!—and we’ve got to work very much quicker. And if those Druids dance I’m jolly well going to see them do it, and then we shall know where we are!’

‘I do beg of you,’ said Mrs. Bradley, looking, this time, genuinely alarmed, ‘not to get into mischief. As I have already pointed out, if your deductions and surmises are correct, we have nearly another nine years in which to solve the problem of these disappearances, and if you are not correct, then idiotic antics among the Druids will not assist the enquiry and may be dangerous. When do you go for your next sitting?’

‘To-morrow,’ said Laura gloomily. ‘I thought you heard me arrange it over the ’phone. Oh, Lord, how I hate being painted!’

‘I know, child, and you have my utmost sympathy. And I did hear you arrange it. I was, however, desirous of changing the subject. You alarm me very much when you get ideas into your head. Now, whilst you are occupying the attention of David Battle, I am going to London. I may be away for a day or two, and I do not want anybody to know that I have left you here alone. In fact, I do not intend that you shall be alone. You will take Mr. Gascoigne to Cuchester with you to-morrow, and you will not go anywhere without him. We have made enemies, I suspect, over this business, and it would be most embarrassing for me to have to explain to your mother that you had met with an accident.’

‘Nothing would surprise her less than to hear I’d broken my neck,’ said Laura cheerfully. ‘All right. I’ll watch my step. But I’m not prepared to promise not to go out and about, and not to poke my nose here and there if it seems to be needed. You can’t ask that sort of thing. I’m turned twenty-one, and…’

‘I ask you to exercise reasonable discretion and to take reasonable precautions,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Not that I think you understand the meaning of the words, but to quiet my conscience, that’s all.’

‘If you’re so bally anxious and old-hen, why on earth don’t you take me with you? Oh, I know! I’ve got to keep Battle in play. Never fear. I’ll watch him like a hawk. How long do you want me to keep a line on him?’

‘Until four o’clock to-morrow afternoon, child.’

‘Easy!’

Escorted by Gascoigne, she went again to Battle’s studio on the following day. They took Mrs. Bradley’s car, for its owner’s mysterious errand could best be accomplished, it appeared, by taking the train.

‘But where will you get the train?’ Laura had demanded. ‘It’s miles to a station from here.’

‘I shall manage,’ Mrs. Bradley had replied.

‘She told me not to get into mischief,’ said Laura gloomily, when she and Gascoigne had garaged the car at the Bournemouth end of the town and were going towards David Battle’s studio, ‘but she’s far more likely to get landed in the soup than I am! I don’t like this business of going off cagily by herself. It must be something dangerous, or I’m sure she’d have taken me with her. It’s all poppycock pushing me off like this for this beastly portrait.’

‘Never mind. Play up, and for heaven’s sake look pleasant,’ said Gascoigne. ‘You don’t want that horrible expression bequeathed to posterity. Think what your grandchildren would say. And, another thing. Mike is coming down this evening. Says he’s got news and must see me. What do you say to that? Look here, if we can get hold of another female, let’s go to Welsea for dinner. I’m becoming rather tired of Slepe Rock. What do you say?’

Laura accepted the invitation immediately, and they mounted to Battle’s studio. The artist was already in front of the portrait.

‘Come on, come on!’ he said irritably, ‘I’m in form to-day. How long can you give me, Miss Menzies?’

‘Oh, an hour,’ said Laura, picking up a piece of newspaper and dusting the model throne before she sat down. ‘This is Mr. Gascoigne.’

The two men nodded to one another. Then Gascoigne said, ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Battle, messing with oil paint which he squeezed from fat and filthy-looking tubes. ‘I have never seen you, anyway. I’d remember if I had. I always remember faces.’

Laura thought that this was not an idle boast. A painter most likely would always remember faces. No more was said, and Battle was soon at work, concentrating with a frown, and never stepping away to look at his work. Gascoigne had brought a book, and, after glancing a little doubtfully at the only chair in the studio, he surreptitiously placed the jacket of the book on the seat of the chair before he sat down to read.

An hour passed, and Battle continued to paint. Laura, catching Gascoigne’s eye, shrugged helplessly. Mrs. Bradley’s witching hour was past. It was five o’clock by Laura’s wrist-watch.

‘I say, aren’t we nearly through for to-day? I can come again to-morrow, if you like,’ she said at last.

‘Keep still,’ said Battle, squeezing out more paint and daubing it rapidly and in chunks and lumps on to his canvas. ‘I’ve got it! And you can’t have the portrait until after I’ve shown it. It’s good.’

‘But, look…’ said Laura. The artist took no notice. He put down his brushes, and, going at the picture with great energy, proceeded to work at the oil colour with his fingers, a dirty piece of thick linen, and what looked like an empty paint-tube.

‘There,’ he said at last, stepping back. ‘You can go home when you like now.’

Laura got down stiffly.

‘Thank heaven for that,’ she observed. She walked over and looked at the painting. ‘Hm! Not bad.’

‘It’s good,’ said Battle, shortly. ‘And I’m tired.’

Gascoigne looked at his watch.

‘Let’s all go and have some tea,’ he suggested. ‘Plenty of places in the town.’

‘Not for me,’ said Battle. ‘I’ll clean this muck off my hands and then I’m going out to get drunk. I’ll never do better work than I’ve done this afternoon, and I’m going to celebrate. So long.’

‘I suppose,’ said Gascoigne, detaining him, ‘you don’t know a fellow named Firman?’

‘Firman? I’ve some cousins named Firman, I believe. I’ve never met them. My father’s sister’s kids. Gosh awful, at that. Why do you want to know? I hate the thought of them.’

‘It isn’t you I’ve met before, then; it’s your cousin, that’s all,’ said Gascoigne. He enlarged on the resemblance between Battle and Firman to Laura on the way back to Slepe Rock. ‘And the queer thing is, of course,’ he added, ‘that Firman was one of the hounds that day when Mike helped to carry that fat fellow to the car. It seems to me that we might do worse than get Firman to answer a few questions. It wouldn’t do any harm. And I’ll put Mike on to this chap Battle. He may get more out of him than I can.’

‘I should hardly think so,’ said Laura. ‘If your fatal charm doesn’t do the trick I shouldn’t think Mike would get anywhere. Still, anything you say. And although I’ve more or less promised Mrs. Croc. that I won’t step high, wide and handsome while she’s out of the way, I don’t see why we shouldn’t explore an avenue or two now she’s gone. You go ahead and get Mike down here, and let’s see what we can ferret out amongst us. I should like to surprise the Old Lizard. She’s been putting on dog a bit lately.’

O’Hara arrived by motor cycle at ten o’clock that night, too late for dinner. He was in high spirits and announced that he was ready and willing to take part in carrying out any plans that might be proposed by the others.

‘And what I wanted to tell you is this,’ he added. ‘You know that queer house—the big one with the four dead trees in its grounds? I’ve discovered, from looking up old records, that it used to be called Nine Acres. The recurrence of the number noted by Miss Menzies and sent along by you, Gçrry, seems a bit of a pointer, and so I propose that, instead of keeping out of that house as ordered by the notice on the gate, we jolly well go in. I’ve been thinking over the details of that day we had our run and I think I’ve stumbled on a clue.’

‘Say on!’ said Laura, with enthusiasm. Gascoigne looked interested but said nothing. O’Hara continued quietly:

‘It’s this: you know I thought I spotted you, Gerry, from the path round Grimston Banks? Well, the fellow I saw was Firman. We’re pretty certain of that. He was making for a gap in the hills, and he wasn’t so very far ahead of me. I ought to have caught him, but I didn’t, because of my gammy ankle. After that, I was misdirected by that fellow in the car. Now, if Firman had turned into that house, that would account for my having seen no more of him. It’s a long shot, I know, but the house is on the way to that farm, and we’ve had a hunch, all along, that there’s something fishy about Firman.’

‘It’s odd you should revive that,’ said Gascoigne. ‘A fellow down here, whose father disappeared and has never been traced, is cousin to Firman. It’s a coincidence, certainly, but there it is. I still don’t see, though, what the house has to do with it, or quite why Firman should turn in there.’

‘It’s only this,’ said O’Hara. ‘If Firman had done what he said he did, and gone to his uncle’s, I shouldn’t have spotted him at all. You remember we worked that out from the map. Also, if you did what you said you did—and I’m absolutely certain you did, allow me to say!—I couldn’t have seen you either. Therefore we inferred that it was Firman I saw. Now, Firman has a gammy leg, and I know I had a gammy ankle, but, even so, I ought to have caught him. Instead of that, I never saw him again. Ergo, he went to ground and for that there’s still no explanation, nor is there any explanation of why he said he went to his uncle’s.’

‘Well,’ said Gascoigne, looking at Laura. ‘We mustn’t be hampered. There’s a club event billed for Saturday which I had not intended to dignify with my presence, but in a good cause… What do you say?’

‘We’ve no guarantee that Firman will turn up for the run,’ protested O’Hara.

‘He’ll turn up all right, if only to disarm suspicion,’ said Gascoigne shrewdly. ‘Therefore— ’

‘In the changing-room when the runners have all set forth,’ said O’Hara, nodding.

‘Oh, well, that takes care of that,’ said Laura carelessly. ‘Now, about this house. When do you think we should go there? Before or after Saturday?’

‘I think to-morrow would be best,’ said Gascoigne at once. ‘I don’t think to-night would be feasible… not for a first visit, anyway. After all, we may be barking up quite the wrong tree, although…’ he glanced at his cousin’s thin, dark face, deep eyes and proudly-carried head… ‘Mike’s hunches are almost monotonously sound.’

Laura looked upon the gifted youth with favour.

‘Attaboy!’ she observed. But she had sighed with relief when she heard that the two young men did not intend to visit the house that night.

Laura was bold as a lion, but was as superstitious as a warlock. She was full of dark fancies drowned in primordial deeps. She also believed, with healthy, female instinct, that dangerous and delicate missions were less unpleasant in the daylight than in the dark. With respect to the house itself, she was torn between a frantic desire to visit it and an equally strong determination not to go anywhere near its boundaries. She was, in fact, like a child who both dreads and longs for a ghost-story just at bedtime. The thrill would be worth it, the aftermath definitely not. In other words, although Laura was both practical and hard-headed, and although she was brisk, jimp and daring in all that she undertook, she was also the prey of an inherited belief in the legends, spectres and bogies of a Highland ancestry. It was one of the many reasons for her adherence to Mrs. Bradley, who was legend, spectre and bogie all in one, for she felt, without realizing it, that the greater demon kept lesser demons at bay.

However, before the three parted that night, they were pledged to visit the house very early on the following morning.

‘Well, now,’ said Gascoigne, climbing into the car, ‘boot, saddle, to horse and away!’ The morning was fresh and fine as the car drove off for the house with the four dead trees.

‘But I can’t see what we’re going to do when we get there,’ said Laura, when they had left Cuchester and were crawling along a very narrow lane on the east side of the level-crossing. ‘It’s been keeping me awake all night.’

‘We’re going to test Mike’s password,’ said Gascoigne mysteriously.

‘Has he got a password? Oh, yes, of course! I think I know it. Mrs. Bradley said something.’

‘1 bet she did,’ said O’Hara. ‘It must have stuck out a mile to anyone with any intelligence.’

‘Ah, well!’ said Gascoigne. As they approached the turning which led to the house, they had to pull over to the right almost into the ditch in order to pass a large lorry loaded with great blocks of ice such as are delivered to fishmongers in the summer. The lorry had broken down, and the two men in charge of it were seated at the roadside smoking cigarettes. The bonnet was raised, and there were tools lying on the edge of the grass verge.

‘Lazy devils,’ grunted Gascoigne, as the car crawled round the lorry.

‘Ice?’ remarked O’Hara. ‘I wonder where they’re going? They’re coming away from Cuchester, and there’s nowhere much down this way until you get to…’

‘Ice!’ exclaimed Laura dramatically. ‘I bet I know where it’s going and what it’s for! Tell you what! When we get to the house we’ll hide and watch it go in.’

‘But we don’t know… how do you?… oh, I see what you mean!’ said Gascoigne. He looked amused. ‘I should hardly think so, you know.’

‘Well, we could hide the car in that little wood we’re coming to, and snake along to the house, and keep watch for a bit. If the ice is delivered there, it might very well mean what I think it means.’

‘Tell you what,’ said O’Hara, who took Laura’s suggestion more seriously than his cousin appeared to be taking it, ‘let’s stroll back in a minute, and ask them where they’re bound for. That can be done without arousing any suspicion. Anyway, they won’t know, ten to one, what the ice is to be used for. That is, of course, supposing it is delivered to the house we’re thinking of. Though, for my own part… Oh, well, it won’t hurt to find out.’

‘It’s a very good idea,’ said Laura. ‘You two go back and ask, and I’ll keep the engine running, ready to make a dash for it if necessary.’

Gascoigne seemed doubtful, but O’Hara’s strange experience on the evening of the hare and hounds had predisposed him in favour of wild schemes, for nothing, he felt, could be as wild as his unforeseen adventure.

‘Come on,’ he said briefly; and the two young men got out of the car and strolled back towards the ice-cart.

They returned in about a quarter of an hour.

‘Go on,’ said Gascoigne to Laura.

‘Well?’ she said, after she had let in the clutch.

‘The name of the house is Cottam’s,’ said Gascoigne. ‘And these fellows are down on their luck. They’ve come from Poole Harbour, lost their way after Brandencote, and have been all night on the road. They’ve just about had enough of it. Ought to have been back by now. Nothing but trouble all the way. Never been to the house before, and will take care they never go again. (I’m glad you weren’t there to hear their language!) Anyway, they’ve given us a reason for calling. The ice is wanted urgently, so I’ve promised to say they are coming with it and I’m to swear it isn’t their fault that they’ve been so long upon the road.’

‘What do they think the ice will be used for?’ asked Laura. Gascoigne laughed.

‘They didn’t say what they thought it would be used for, but they said they could tell the people what to do with it when they got it, which is not, perhaps, quite the same thing. Of course,’ he added, ‘as we don’t know that the house with the four dead trees is now called Cottam’s, it’s quite possible that our destination is not the same as theirs. It was no good describing the house to them, because they only know it by name.’

‘But we do know it’s called Cottam’s! Mrs. Bradley and I know. Are the people called Cottam, or only the house?’ said Laura quickly.

‘The people are called Gonn-Brown.’

‘Gonn-Brown? But that’s a film company! I’ve seen their offices in Wardour Street. Mrs. Bradley vetted the psychiatry in one of their films.’

‘Really?’ said Gascoigne. ‘Remind me of that a bit later. Like the heavenly Yvonne Arnaud, (in Tons of Money) I’ve got an idea!’

‘Well, here’s the house,’ said O’Hara. ‘Drive past it, Miss Menzies, and we’ll park the car where it can’t be seen from the windows.’

Laura took the extremely narrow turning very slowly, and the car bumped over a culvert and then over a humped bridge a little farther along.

‘About here,’ said O’Hara.

Laura pulled up, and the three got out. She locked the car, and then they strolled back along the way by which they had come until they reached the gates. These were propped wide open, and the notice board with its terse instruction to keep out was now covered by a piece of paper affixed to the board by four drawing pins.

The paper read TRADESMEN ONLY.

‘This is us,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Look here, you’d better not come up to the door, Mike, in case you’re recognized. And you, Miss Menzies…’

‘I’m coming,’ said Laura flatly. ‘A man and a woman are far less remarkable than one or other on their own. Just give the message about the ice-cart, and then we’ll see how they react.’

Gascoigne did not argue. They walked up to the ecclesiastical door, and Laura stood looking at it whilst Gascoigne pulled at an ancient bell. They could hear this clanging, and then came the sound of footsteps along a stone-flagged passage. A woman opened the door. She was younger than middle-aged (but not at all youthful), full-fleshed, handsome and blowsy. Laura, with the swiftness of a panther, slipped to the outside of the porch.

‘Good morning,’ said Gascoigne to the woman. ‘We promised to bring a message. The ice you are expecting is on its way, but the lorry has broken down. They’ll be here as soon as they can.’

‘The ice?’ said the woman. ‘I don’t know anything about it. I’ll enquire.’

She went to the back of the house, leaving the front door open. Gascoigne watched her all the way along the stone-flagged passage until a door closed behind her. Laura made tracks for the gate. The woman returned. She looked Gascoigne over as though she were memorizing his face, and then said :

‘Sorry you’ve had your trouble. No ice expected here.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Gascoigne.

‘I’m sorry you’ve been troubled,’ she repeated, and closed the door very gently in his face, giving him, as she did so, a lustful and conciliatory smile. It was evident she had had no eyes for Laura.

‘Thank goodness for your comely face,’ said the latter, when Gascoigne joined her. ‘You could have knocked me endwise! That was the woman from Newcombe Soulbury, that was! Ah, well, let’s wait and watch the lorry drive in. There’s something delightfully fishy about all this—or don’t you think so?’

She walked beside Gascoigne slowly back to the car. O’Hara was not to be seen. They climbed in, and had scarcely done so when a car came from the opposite direction, slowed down, and stopped. A boy got out from beside the driver, and went forward to open the lodge gates.

‘Well!’ said Laura. ‘What do you make of that? That’s the kid from the hotel! The one who threw rocks at me the other morning!’

The boy pushed the gates back as wide as they would go, and the car drove in past the lodge.

Of O’Hara there was still no sign. Gascoigne lit a cigarette for Laura and another for himself, and had scarcely put away his lighter when O’Hara dropped over the high brick wall which shut the house off from the road, came down in the ditch, picked himself up and hurried towards the car.

‘The boy seems in a hurry!’ said Laura, starting the engine as O’Hara opened the door and scrambled inside.

‘That woman you spoke to… I was hiding in the bushes… she’s the one at the farm… the one who told me she was alone in the house. And those people who drove up just now…’

‘Are the man and the boy from our hotel at Slepe Rock. Yes, we know,’ said Laura.

‘And there goes the ice-cart,’ said Gascoigne, as the lorry drove in at the gates. ‘All liars, aren’t they?’

‘I don’t know about liars, but they may be murderers,’ said O’Hara. ‘I heard that man who came with the kid—I heard him speak. That’s the fellow called Con, I’m almost certain.’