The Dancing Druids

Chapter Five

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‘All the day long she flew about in the form of an owl, or crept about the country like a cat, but at night she always became an old woman again.’

Ibid. (Jorinda and Jorindel)

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Mrs. Bradley had one characteristic in particular which her young and lively secretary was child enough to appreciate. It was that when she planned a thing the plan was carried out without delay. Too many older people, Laura Menzies had always thought, put forth fascinating ideas and made rash and delightful promises, only to drive their youthful protégées demented by loitering, gossiping, or remembering duties which had to be performed, until the dust and ashes of frustration and disappointment completely covered the bright gold of the pleasure in store.

Mrs. Bradley was free from this regrettable fault. When she planned an outing it ‘stayed planned’ as Laura had once gratefully and inaccurately observed. Therefore it was with pleasant feelings of excitement and interest that Laura ordered the car after lunch, convinced that when Mrs. Bradley said ‘five to two on the gravel,’ she meant just that.

At five to two, therefore, Mrs. Bradley’s car appeared at the front of the house, and by two o’clock Mrs. Bradley, accompanied by Laura, and with the chauffeur, George, at the wheel, was out on the Cuchester Road.

‘We are not going quite as far as the farm in this,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Some of our investigations would be better conducted on foot. Have you brought the map?’

‘Yes, of course. I’ve also brought your revolver.’

‘Tut, child. It’s daylight, and we shall be home before dark.’

‘I feel safer with it,’ said Laura doggedly. ‘I don’t like all these corpses and hot-water bottles. Besides, I’m a pretty good shot, and I wouldn’t mind trying my skill. So if any ugly blighters come into my line of vision I shall know what to do, that’s all. One can always plead self-defence.’

She stretched out her five foot ten of abundant muscle, bone and firm flesh, and grinned contentedly.

The car, travelling south and a point towards the east, came opposite the Early Iron Age fortress from whose mighty battlements O’Hara had tried to follow the movements of Gascoigne the hare.

‘And now,’ said Mrs. Bradley, as George pulled up on the turf, ‘George shall take the car round to where Mr. O’Hara says that he met this man who directed him wrongly, and we will pick up the car again when we have followed the route which Mr. O’Hara says he took before he met with this man.’

‘Ah, checking up on O’Hara’s story,’ said Laura, approvingly. ‘Intelligent, if I may say so. And I’d like to say that we ought to check Gascoigne’s, too.’

‘You may say what you please, child,’ said Mrs Bradley with her usual good-humour. ‘Those are, I should say, the obvious things for us to do.’

‘Yes, we must explore all avenues,’ agreed Laura. ‘You know, I feel I’m going to enjoy this business. There’s a smack of Edgar Allan Poe about it which rather appeals to my sense of the bizarre and the macabre.’

‘I didn’t know you had one,’ said her employer. Laura grinned, and then added, with her usual cheerfulness :

‘Anyway, it’s a grand afternoon and it’s glorious country, and I like to have something to do. Somewhere to aim for, I mean. I say, though, it’s steep up here! And talk about the wind on the heath!’

They avoided, however, the steepest and shortest slope, and followed the rough path which ended in a wooden gate beside which was a notice. This proved to be indecipherable, so, unable to take advantage of any warning or invitation it might once have conveyed, they opened the gate and passed through.

To their left a narrow track led them up to the entrance of the fortress, two great banks of earth, turfed over now, but reinforced underneath with enormous blocks of hewn stone.

‘We must come here again,’ said Laura, as they mounted a high bank and began to circumambulate the citadel. They were moving to their left, round the northern circuit of the embankments, past a ditch which was fifty feet deep. To their left stretched the fields and lay the sheepfolds of a lesser and more homely civilization. Farther off was a symmetrical round barrow, and in front of them, everywhere that they faced, were hills, but hills higher and kindlier than the shadowed and doom-laden mound on which they stood.

‘By Jove, you know, it makes you think,’ said Laura.

‘This way, I think,’ said Mrs. Bradley. She crossed a bridge of earth at the western end of the ditch. Laura followed, and soon they had cut through the middle of the inner sanctuary of the fortress. They passed the ruins of a Roman temple, by-passed the heights on which the cattle of the Iron Age had pastured in time of war, and regained the track which ringed the fortress. Soon they were in the ditch where O’Hara had turned his ankle. From this they reached the sandy lane where O’Hara had been stopped by the man in the car.

‘Well, O’Hara told the truth so far, wouldn’t you say?’ enquired Laura, leaning against a gate. ‘And there’s George. Geo—orge!’

She waved, and George drove towards them.

‘There has certainly been a car up here, madam,’ he said, ‘and only one. I made a sketch of the tyre-tracks in case you should want to identify them anywhere else.’

‘Excellent, George,’ said Mrs. Bradley, handing him back his drawing. ‘And very useful. Miss Menzies and I are going to continue our walk. You have directions for finding the farm. You had better keep about half a mile away from it, or, if anything, rather more. You don’t want to seem interested in it in any way whatsoever. There are plenty of things to admire. Be careful to excite no suspicion.’

‘Very good, madam.’ He reversed the car towards the main road, and turned it expertly at a gateway.

‘Now, then,’ said Laura, ‘on we go! Come on, and I’ll walk your legs off!’

‘Done!’ said Mrs. Bradley, accepting the challenge in deed as well as in word. She set such a cracking pace up the sandy lane that even Laura, always in training, had to lengthen an already Amazonian stride in order to keep up with her.

The countryside was delightful, and Laura enjoying the prospect of bluish downs, the green of the sloping fields and the miles of open country, had forgotten the object of the walk until the road began to darken and they found themselves passing a strange house with an inhospitable legend.

‘Keep out,’ said Laura, slowing up and reading aloud these unsociable words. ‘I wonder where the old chap has gone with the barrow? You know, this place looks a bit like a lunatic asylum to me. One of those grim places you read about in Victorian novels. What do you think?’

‘I don’t think at all at present. I merely observe and note,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘This is undoubtedly the Elizabethan manor which has the four dead trees in the park, for, as we turn the corner, there they are! Mr. O’Hara has not, so far, misled us.’ Her tone expressed something more than satisfaction.

‘It is a queer-looking place,’ said Laura, gazing in fascination at the trees. ‘How did that notice affect you, by the way? Personally, I have an almost uncontrollable desire to turn in my tracks and Go In.’

‘We have not much time to spare,’ said Mrs. Bradley, setting out briskly again. Soon they had left the grim gibbets of the four dead trees. The woods began to show bluish away to the south, and, at last, Mrs. Bradley leading, she and Laura entered a deep, dark tunnel of trees in a small, silent, circular wood, and were at the farm.

Opposite the ruined cottage Mrs. Bradley stopped, and Laura came up and caught her arm. From a chimney of the farmhouse smoke was coming.

‘I say!’ muttered Laura. ‘I don’t like this very much! Did you expect to find the place occupied, after what those lads told us the other day?’

Mrs. Bradley did not answer, and the two of them moved forward with great caution. They crept up the front garden path and peered in at the window, The room was empty, but flickering flames were being thrown out by a small and lively fire.

‘Well, I don’t know what you think,’ muttered Laura, gluing her nose to the glass, ‘but I should say that fire’s not been lighted very long. You know, this is what I should call rummy—very rummy. Those lads said the place was empty. Could it have been sold between Sunday and to-day? Or—oh, of course, they did find the ashes of a fire in this same grate— ’

Mrs. Bradley drew her enthusiastic secretary away from the window, and they moved quietly round to the side door of the house. This was ajar. To Laura’s surprise, Mrs. Bradley walked in and called loudly:

‘Is anybody about?’

There was the sound of footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs, and an elderly woman came down.

‘Did you want anything?’ she asked.

‘Can you direct us to the nearest garage?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired. ‘We’ve had to leave the car up the road and are strangers to the neighbourhood.’

‘I don’t know whether I can help you,’ replied the woman. ‘How far away is your car?’

‘Oh, a mile or so,’ Mrs. Bradley vaguely replied. ‘Somewhere over there.’ She waved a skinny claw in a north-easterly direction.

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you. I’m only here to air the house. It’s been let because of the film people down at Cottam’s.’

‘Really? Oh, well, thank you.’ Mrs. Bradley touched Laura’s arm. ‘We had better go back and try that other little lane, my dear. I don’t envy you if you’re staying the night here,’ she added, turning to the woman. ‘It seems very lonely, doesn’t it? We happened to see the smoke from your chimney. I am so sorry to have troubled you.’

‘Oh, I don’t live here,’ said the woman. ‘I’m only here to oblige. The gentleman sent a postcard to ask me to air the house. I live at Little Dorsett, over yonder, up the hill. There’s a short cut. It isn’t very far. You could walk it in half an hour. I’ll put you on the road if you like, but I mustn’t be long, else my old man will be shouting after me.’

She took off her apron, hung it on the end of the banisters, smoothed her hair with a working-woman’s blunt-fingered hand, and then went with Laura to the gate.

‘I shall be slower than you will,’ said Mrs. Bradley to the woman, ‘so I’ll follow behind, and meet you as you come back. You go on, Laura, will you?’

Laura nodded intelligently and urged the woman along at a pace which was almost a trot. Mrs. Bradley loitered behind them, and, as soon as they had turned into the wood, she darted back to the house, went in, and hastened into the room in which the fire was burning.

For what purpose it had been lighted she could not determine. There was nothing to show that it had not been lighted to air the house, as the woman had said. There was no sign that documents had been burnt on it. A stout poker lay in the hearth. Thoughtfully impounding this, and holding it in a gloved hand, Mrs. Bradley searched the rest of the house.

It was getting too dark to see much, so, trusting, that no one would see the glow of it, she switched on her torch. There was nothing to be discovered on the ground floor, so she mounted the stairs, retaining the poker as a weapon.

Just as she reached the bedroom described by O’Hara, she thought she heard sounds from below. She opened the door of an enormous built-in cupboard and stepped inside.

‘Nellie!’ cried a man’s voice. ‘Nellie! Where the plague have ee got to, woman?’

Mrs. Bradley awaited with interest the next part of the proceedings. She could hear doors being opened and shut, and, as the footsteps grew fainter and the man went towards the kitchen, she emerged, and, switching on her torch again, made a rapid survey of the floor. Except that, unlike the downstair floors, this one had been scrubbed recently, there was nothing remarkable about it.

The remaining bedrooms were dusty, cobweb-tapestried to an almost incredible degree, unfurnished and undisturbed.

Mrs. Bradley was leaving the last of them when an angry bellow came up the well of the stairs.

‘Oh, there ee be, Nellie, confound ee! Why the devil don’t ee answer when I calls you?’

Mrs. Bradley slipped into the corridor and came on noiseless feet to the head of the stairs. There was a slight recess in the wall. She flattened herself into this and waited for the man to ascend. She still held the poker. She hoped he would not bring a light, but was ready to knock it out of his hand if he did.

He had no torch. She could hear him stumbling up the stairs.

‘Nellie!’ he bellowed. Mrs. Bradley allowed him to walk past her. Then she slid out of her alcove and descended the stairs. She replaced the poker on the hearth from which she had taken it, came out to the side door and ensconced herself in the shadows. She waited. The man came downstairs as soon as he had searched the upstair rooms.

‘Nellie!’ he called desperately. ‘It do be you, don’t it? Answer me, girl! Where be ee?’

Mrs. Bradley let him get half-way down the kitchen passage, and then she gave an eldritch screech of laughter. She heard a startled oath, and then the sound of a panic-stricken voice shouting:

‘Nellie! Nellie! For God’s sake! It do be ’aunted after all! Where be ee, girl? Why the old Nick don’t ee answer?’

Mrs. Bradley sped down the weed-grown drive and ran for dear life along the lane in the direction the others had taken. Then she slowed down, and, by the time the woman reappeared, Mrs. Bradley was patiently toiling up the long, rutted slope of the hill.

‘She’ve got long legs, your grand-daughter,’ said the woman. ‘But you keep all on up along here, and you’ll pick her up in good time.’

Mrs. Bradley thanked her, and toiled on. Half-way up the hill, Laura emerged with conspiratorial caution from a bush, and, crossing the hill, they made a detour, aided by the map, and reached George and the car without passing the farmhouse again.

‘I’m sorry you had to come so far after us,’ said Laura, ‘but I felt bound to go on a bit after she left me in case she turned round and spotted me, and began to suspect us of something. I was worried about you, though I hope you had time to snoop round? It didn’t seem to take you very long.’

‘I did nicely, thank you, child. The bedroom floor had been scrubbed, as those young men told us. I think I’ll have a word with the County Police when we get back.’

‘Will they think a scrubbed floor enough to go on?’

‘Time will show, child. It is the question of the heavy man’s failure to arrive at the hospital which will interest them. There was a man in the house, by the way. I am reasonably certain that he is the woman’s husband, and that they are there to get the house aired or for some innocent and similar reason. When the new tenants are installed we may be able to find another excuse to call. Meanwhile, there are more profitable fields to explore. Did you get very wet in that hedge?’

‘Soaking,’ said Laura complacently. ‘Did the man in the farmhouse see or hear you?’

‘He both saw me and heard me, child. I gave an eldritch cry, like Tam Lin’s fairy queen, and I am afraid I may have conveyed to him the impression that the house is haunted. It seemed, from what he said, that there is a tale of a ghost. If there is, it might be as well to find out the details. There is scope for many strange things in a house which has the reputation of being haunted.’

‘I’d like to have seen the bloke’s face when you screeched in his ear,’ observed Laura.

‘I did not screech in his ear,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘But you might screech in George’s, and tell him I want my dinner.’