The Dancing Druids

Chapter Twenty-Five

—«♦»—

‘After some time, however, the old fox really died; and soon afterwards a wolf came to pay his respects.’

Ibid. (Mrs. Fox)

« ^

Artemis Orthia?’ said Laura. ‘But wasn’t she made out of a tree? Well, I take it as a mark of favour on David Battle’s part that he should give me a warning of my impending demise!’

‘So, you see,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘we want to know why the ice-cart came here that day.’

‘Ice?’ said the old man with the wheelbarrow. ‘Oh, ah. Ice. I remember.’ He ruminated, pulling at a small clay pipe the colour of the soil. ‘Ice, says you. And proper, too. But it were them fillum folks ordered it. Wanted to make a picture of the North Pole explorers, or summat of that, so they tell me. Photography, like. The ice all throwed out in a pond they dug in the garden. Show ee? Ah, I’ll show ee. It were over there where they planted them bits of pine trees.’

‘And who stayed here besides the film people and Mr. Concaverty?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired. ‘Did you ever see anyone else?’

‘Why, no, I dunno as I did.’

‘No one else was a stranger to you except the film people?’

‘Nobody else, without it might be some of the indoor servants. But such as them ’aven’t time for the likes of me.’

‘So that’s that,’ said the Chief Constable briefly. ‘Now, what? Or shall we go to the cave? Is that old man in the plot?

‘I was right to forbid Laura to go to David Battle’s studio,’ said Mrs. Bradley, following her own train of thought. ‘Behold the fifth dead tree.’

She went back to the old man. He had finished his pipe and was contemplating it before knocking it out against the ancient brick wall of the culvert.

‘What killed the trees?’ she enquired.

‘Ah!’ said the old man, making up his mind, and knocking the pipe out carefully. ‘Got a hairpin, I wonder?’

Mrs. Bradley produced one from among her shining locks and handed it over.

‘You know who killed them, I suppose?’ she asked carelessly.

‘Me? Oh, I knows. None better. It were that there expert they brought down. “Got to ’ave ’em dead,” says Mr. Concaverty to me. “Wanted for the fillum,” he says. “Can you kill ’em?” he says. “I can kill moles and that old water-rat, and chickens and pigs, and an old turkey gobbler or two. That’s me,” I says. “But trees! Nobody don’t kill trees,” I says, “without they’re daft,” I says. “Now if ’twere only that there old water-rat,” I says…’

‘Yes, but what did this expert look like? And how did he kill them?’ enquired the Chief Constable brusquely. The old man looked at him with rheumy, intelligent, blue eyes.

‘He were biggish,’ he said. ‘Ay, he were biggish. And he killed ’em with turps and resin, and with burnin’ at the roots, and with brimstone from hell, and with curses. Ay, how he cursed them there trees!’

‘So you’ve come!’ said David Battle.

‘Yes,’ Laura agreed. ‘But only to arrange terms.’

‘Terms?’

‘Sure. If I’m to sit to you for some kind of anonymous classical work, I must receive pay.’

‘Pay?’

‘Don’t keep up this Echo on Parnassus stuff. What sort of mutt do you think I am? I have to earn my living, don’t forget.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘But me no buts. What are the odds?’

‘Odds?’

‘Oh, Lord!’

‘Now, look here,’ said Battle, putting down the charcoal he had picked up and coming over to her, ‘nothing was said about fees.’

‘I know. I’ve come to say something about them now. Your rake-off from those faked pictures must have been fairly considerable. Where do I come in?’

‘You little…!’ said Battle, looking dangerous.

Laura, who topped him by two and a half inches, and weighed considerably more than he did, resented the adjective considerably more than the noun.

‘Little nothing,’ she observed coldly. ‘And while we’re on the subject of emoluments, just what did they pay you for blotting out that wretched Firman?’

Battle went white, and Laura, accustomed to teasing her brothers, instinctively ducked. But he made no move to attack her. He turned away and said pettishly:

‘Don’t be a lout. You know perfectly well I don’t kill people.’

‘Still got to break your duck?’ said Laura pleasantly. ‘Well, that’s all right with me. If it comes to a toss up between us, I bet I’m as good as you are. Now, reverting to the main topic of conversation…’

‘Will five bob an hour do? I can’t afford more than that.’

‘Make it seven and six, and it’s a do.’

‘But… all right, then. There’s a screen over there. Get ready behind it, and then— ’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Laura. She had to pass the screen to reach the door, and gave it a hearty shove as she went by. Apart from the fact that, as she had supposed, there was someone concealed behind it, she learned nothing from this manœuvre, and did not stay to repair her knowledge. She tore down the stairs and went straight, to Cuchester police station. By the time the police got to the house, however, both David and the other bird had flown.

‘So now for the cave,’ said O’Hara. ‘You know, Laura, you ought to be throttled for going to Battle and risking your silly young life.’

‘So I shall be, when my young man comes here, and he’s due back any day now,’ said Laura with great contentment. ‘Mrs. Croc. created a bit—unusual with her—but I still say it was worth it. I intended to bust David Battle’s bona fides, and I did.’

‘His what?’ asked Gascoigne loftily. He also was very angry with Laura for placing herself in danger, a position reserved by rights for gods and men, and, apart from this lordly sally, had ignored her since their reunion.

‘Suspenders to you,’ said Laura vulgarly.

‘Laura,’ said Mrs. Bradley, later, ‘cannot forgive David Battle for having the same Christian name as her fiancé. It endeared him to her at first, and the reaction is all the more severe.’

Unaware of this acute reading of her subconscious mind, Laura sent an affectionate telegram to her beloved, and prepared herself for the cave.

The company, apart from policemen, was to consist of all the protagonists in the drama except for Denis, who had been requested to turn out for his Rugby football club against Richmond. This call of the wild could scarcely be ignored, so, regretfully, he had been obliged to leave his favourite aunt to her own devices for a while and shoulder the responsibilities of manhood.

The others, as Laura gleefully expressed it, were all in the swim, and the party went by car to Slepe Rock under the cover of the darkness and the protection of the police.

‘We shall depend upon you to identify these men, sir,’ said Inspector Fielding to O’Hara.

‘I’ll do that,’ the kingly youth responded. ‘The thing is, what are you going to charge ’em with? Those remains in the iron box haven’t been identified yet, and I don’t think my identification of the fellow who kidnapped poor Firman would be accepted.’

‘Well, sir,’ said the Inspector, ‘we are hoping to charge them with the murder of a Mr. and Mrs. Nankison, whose bodies have been identified.’

‘Never heard of ’em.’

‘Not by name, sir, perhaps. Since we got to know of the goings-on in this cave, we’ve been doing a bit of investigating, and the conclusion we’ve come to is that drowned persons— you may recollect hearing that the first owners of Slepe Cottage, as it was then called, were lost in a yachting accident —might possibly get washed up in a cave or almost anywhere, but what doesn’t happen to them, strange to say, is that they get themselves nicely buried there, with a couple of limestone boulders to keep them down.’

‘Good heavens!’ said O’Hara. ‘Not really? I mean, you haven’t really found that drowned couple who inherited the house from Bulstrode?’

‘And Mr. Bulstrode himself, sir, what is more,’ said the Inspector with great satisfaction. ‘Also a head and a pair of hands, which we should like to have identified.’

‘Did Mrs. Bradley put you on to it?’

‘Yes, she did, sir. And a nod was as good as a wink. The police, in their way, sir, are not entirely without imagination.’

O’Hara and Gascoigne, not unused to the interior of Bow Street after Boat-Race night, did not believe this last statement. Gascoigne chuckled, O’Hara was silent, and soon the police car, followed by that of Mrs. Bradley, crept down the long hill towards the sea, and drew up half a mile from the bay.

‘Now, then,’ said the inspector, ‘everybody quiet, please. And no torches unless you see me use mine. You’ll have to manage in the dark, the same as cats.’

‘And bats and owls,’ muttered Laura. But, like the others, she followed the route in silence and in the darkness. The little party—there were a sergeant and two constables with the inspector—soon climbed the grassy slope to the top of the cliffs above the bay, and there, at a curt command, they lay and waited.

Time passed, and three of the hunters had begun to think that the quarry was not going to show up when a searchlight, playing over the bay from a point to the east of the watchers, picked out a fair-sized yacht and a couple of boats which seemed to be making towards her.

‘O.K. for vision,’ muttered Inspector Fielding contentedly, and took his policemen away with him. The boats, in the searchlight’s beam, became a couple of frenzied insects, their oars sprouting like legs.

‘Why can’t we go with them?’ demanded Laura, referring to the police, and feeling disappointed and affronted by the rather mean tactics of the regulars.

‘Because they won’t let us, and because we have other fish to fry,’ replied Mrs. Bradley. She did nothing, however, for twenty minutes after she had made this statement, and her companions assumed restful attitudes, talked softly, and kept their eyes on the sea, which was again in darkness.

Suddenly Mrs. Bradley rose to her feet.

‘Time for the kill,’ she observed. ‘If you wish to be in at the death, you also may be in for a fairly long walk.’

‘Not—?’ exclaimed Laura suddenly.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘We are going to take your Ancient British trackway—all of us except for George.’

‘Cuddle-Up to his intimates,’ said Laura, with a deplorable giggle.

‘George will take the car to Welsea, garage it, and go to bed,’ said George’s thoughtful employer. ‘There is no need for him to spend the night out.’

‘I beg your pardon, madam,’ said George, extremely coldly. Mrs. Bradley knew better than to argue with him, and replied with great cordiality:

‘Very well, George, but you may have to lurch, belch and bellow, when the time comes.’

‘Vcry good, madam. I have often played the part of an inebriate at domestic festivals in order to amuse my mother’s guests, and shall not be at a loss,’ replied George sublimely.

The party, guided by Laura, took the three-thousand-year-old track across the hills. Laura remembered it chiefly as a thyme-scented open vastness of sky and scudding clouds, the distances broken by green and treeless contours on which the round barrows stood out like the old, healed wounds on an oak; but now there was nothing to see except the faint gleam of torches on the ground, and Laura, working by compass, divination and what she privately regarded as her personal luck, but which included a flair for direction inherited from a long line of Highland moor-and-mountain men, led the party up the first long gradual slope and down the second steep one, past the small circle of standing stones and up to the ancient camp.

‘All right, so far,’ she said, getting up from a tumble into the camp’s grassy ditch. ‘There’s a wood comes next, as I remember it.’

‘And in that wood, where often you and I upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie, we will ambush the villains Cassius and Battle,’ said Mrs. Bradley.

‘You seem very sure about this,’ said O’Hara suddenly. Mrs. Bradley wasted upon the upland darkness a horrible and satisfied leer.

‘I don’t know how to find my way into the wood,’ said Laura, halting upon its outskirts. ‘If it were daylight, we could skirt it and see the three barrows beyond, but— ’

‘Three barrows and three dead men,’ said O’Hara, with Irish omniscience.

‘Then here we stay,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘We don’t need to go in among the trees.’

The night was chilly, and the woods were wet. The party remained upon the outskirts, where Laura remembered fallen tree-trunks. They took these for seats, and waited in patient silence broken only by the striking of a match as the young men lit their pipes.

Mrs. Bradley, whose amiable custom it was to devote her sweets to her young friends, had come with sundry pieces of chocolate. These, and some slices of bread, sustained the party, and a nip all round from her flask helped to keep out the chills and the damp.

At two in the morning, by Laura’s luminous watch, a light appeared among the trees on the edge of the wood, and there was the sound of voices. At a nudge from Mrs. Bradley, Gascoigne got to his feet, switched on his torch, and, loudly swearing, began to grope his way towards the direction from which the voices came.

‘Me, too?’ muttered O’Hara, under cover of his cousin’s noisy progress.

‘No, child. Listen. We must find out first whether these arc the right people.’

‘Yes, of course.’ He relaxed again and listened. Gascoigne had waylaid the newcomers.

‘That’s the man!’ murmured O’Hara, recognizing the voice of the older Battle.

‘Then up and at him!’ Mrs. Bradley commanded. ‘Never mind the rules— ’

‘Just knock ’em cold,’ said Laura, going into battle with her usual single-minded enthusiasm.

‘All three of ’em!’ yelled Gascoigne, from the van of the engagement. The enemy, taken entirely by surprise and outnumbered six to one (for a posse of policemen, to Laura’s fury, got up suddenly like partridges from the ground) formed an easy prey. They were Cassius and the two Battles. Cassius’ son, the lubberly Ivor Sisyphus, was found next morning hiding in the wood.

‘And now,’ said the voice of Laura’s fiancé, David Gavin, who had accompanied the police from Welsea, where he had expected to find Laura that evening, ‘what’s all this about?’

‘If only we could go to bed together,’ said Laura rapturously, from her seat on Mr. Cassius-Concaverty’s head, ‘I’d have plenty of time to tell you.’

‘I doubt it,’ said her swain, ‘but we could try.’

An unpleasant task awaited O’Hara next day. Mrs. Bradley had concluded that the head and hands, which had been dug up from the floor of the cave with the bodies of Bulstrode and the drowned couple, must belong to the man who had misdirected O’Hara (mistaking him for Firman) on the day of the Club hare and hounds.

O’Hara’s confirmation of her theory clinched the case against the Battles and Cassius.

‘I’m afraid of the Druids,’ said Laura. ‘I shall never go near them again.’ The young men were not of this opinion.

‘It’s remarkably interesting, you know,’ said O’Hara. ‘They’re called the Dancing Druids, and one of them did dance. You can’t get away from that. It’s having buried that fellow’s head and hands with the other bodies which has finally done down those murderers.’

It was left to the Chief Constable, however, to say the last word about dancing. It was addressed, moreover, to Mrs. Bradley.

‘You’ve got something—I don’t know what to call it, you know, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘But you always make me think of that fellow—Dante, was it?—“and then a star danced, and under it you were born.” ’

‘Don’t make love to her in front of my face,’ said his wife.

—«»—«»—«»—

1. I am indebted, for this and much other fascinating information, to Prehistoric England, by Grahame Clark.—G. M.

2. Gilbert Keith Chesterton— The Club of Queer Trades.

3. This boy afterwards became Assistant Keeper in the Department of Archaeology in the University Museum at Padmancaster, and wrote a standard work on Bronze Age Survivals in Britain.

[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[A 3S Release— v1, html]

[October 22, 2006]