Look to the Lady (9 page)

Campion did not answer, but smiled affably at the boy. Val seemed relieved.

‘Now I'd better go round and politely turf out that Bohemian crowd,' he said. ‘I don't suppose you want to interview them, Campion?'

The young man with the pleasant vacuous face shook his head.

‘No,' he said, ‘I think it would be better if we did not become acquainted, as it were. There's only one thing. Branch, I suppose, will superintend the luggage?'

‘Why, yes, I suppose so.' Val was almost impatient.

‘Good,' said Campion. ‘See that he does. By the way, he and Lugg were having an Old Boys' Reunion in the hall when I came up.' He turned to the girl. ‘I say, while your brother's speeding the parting guests, I wonder if I could ask you to take me down to the clearing where they found Lady Pethwick?'

She shot him a glance of surprise, but his expression was mild and foolish as ever. ‘Of course I will,' she said.

‘Perhaps we could go by some back way that may exist?' Mr Campion persisted. ‘I don't want my bad taste to be apparent.'

Val glanced at his sister and hesitated. ‘We don't know the exact spot,' he said awkwardly.

‘Naturally,' said Campion, and followed his guide out of the room.

They went down a shallow Elizabethan staircase, along a wide stone-flagged passage, and came out of a side door into a flower garden. As Mr Campion stepped out blinking into the sunshine, the girl laid a hand upon his arm.

‘Look,' she said, ‘you can see the Cup House from here.'

Her companion followed the direction of her eyes and saw a curious rectangular building which had been completely hidden from the front of the house by the enormous eastern wing.

It was situated in a little courtyard of its own, and consisted of what appeared to be two storeys built of flint cobbles reinforced with oak, the lower floor being clearly the Chapel of the Cup, while the upper section had several windows indicating a suite of rooms.

Mr Campion regarded the structure, the sun glinting on his spectacles.

‘Your aunt's artistic friends are upstairs, I suppose?' he said.

‘Oh, yes,' said Penny hastily. ‘The chapel is always kept locked.'

Mr Campion hesitated. ‘There's no doubt,' he ventured, ‘that the relic is safe at the moment?'

The girl stared at him in astonishment. ‘Of course it is,' she said. ‘I'm afraid all this talk of painting my aunt with the Chalice has given you a wrong impression. There were always two of the servants there at the time – Branch and someone else – and the relic was returned to its place and the doors locked after each sitting. There are three rooms up there over the chapel,' she went on, ‘the Maid of the Cup's private apartments in the old days. Aunt had the big room as a sort of studio, but the two small ones are the bedrooms of the two men who have charge of this garden and the chapel building. There's an outside staircase to the first storey.'

‘Oh,' said Mr Campion.

They walked down the broad grass path towards a small gate at the end of the garden. For some time there was silence, and then the girl spoke abruptly.

‘Mr Campion,' she said, ‘I made Val tell me about everything last night – I mean about the danger to the Chalice. You'll have to let me help. You'll find me quite as useful as he. For one thing,' she added, dropping her voice, ‘I haven't got the shadow of The Room hanging over me. Besides,' she went on with a wry little smile, ‘I'm the Maid of the Cup now, you know. I've got a right to come into this and you can count on me.'

Mr Campion's reply was unexpected. ‘I shall hold you to that,' he said. ‘Now I think we'd better hurry.'

They went through the garden gate and across the broad meadow on the other side. Here it was semi-parkland with a great bank of trees upon their left, and presently they entered a small iron gate in the hedge surrounding the wood and struck a footpath leading down into the heart of the greenery.

‘Pharisees' Clearing,' said Penny, ‘is just through here. It's really a strip of grass which separates our wood from the other coppice which is the Tye Hall property where Beth lives.'

‘Ah,' said Mr Campion. ‘And where is Fox Hollow?'

She shot him a quick glance. ‘You remembered that? It's higher up on the other side of their woodlands. Dad really had cause for a grievance, you see, only Professor Cairey himself doesn't shoot, so you can't expect him to understand. And anyhow, he only wants asking. Dad's so silly that way.'

‘Professor?' said Campion thoughtfully. ‘What does he profess?'

‘Archaeology,' said Penny promptly. ‘But you don't think –?'

‘My dear girl,' said Mr Campion, ‘I can't see the wood for trees. “And in the night imagining some fear, how easy doth a bush appear a bear.” You see,' he added with sudden seriousness, ‘if your aunt met her death by someone's design, I'm not only out of my depth, but I might just as well have left my water-wings at home.' He paused and looked about him. ‘I suppose this is a happy hunting ground for poachers?'

Penny shook her head. ‘I don't think there's a man, woman or child in the whole of Sanctuary who'd come within a mile of Pharisees' Clearing after dark,' she said. She hesitated for some seconds as if debating whether to go on. ‘I get on very well with the country folk,' she added suddenly, ‘and naturally I hear a good deal of local chatter. They believe that this wood and the clearing are haunted – not by a ghost, but by something much worse than that. No one's ever seen it that I know of, but you know what country people are.'

‘I thought the breed had died out,' said her companion. ‘Gone are the dimpled milkmaids and the ancient gaffers of my youth. You can't even see them on the pictures.'

Penny smiled faintly. ‘We're very much behind the times here,' she said. ‘We've even got a local witch – poor old Mrs Munsey. She lives with her son in a little henhouse of a place some distance away from the village. They're both half-wits, you know, really, poor things. But there's a world of prejudice against them, and they're both so bad-tempered you can't do anything for them. Sammy Munsey is the village idiot, I suppose, but the old woman is a venomous old party. And that's why –' she hesitated, ‘you'll probably think I'm a fool for mentioning this, but she put a curse on Aunt Di at the last full moon, and it was full moon again last night.'

She reddened and glanced furtively at her companion, whose pleasant vacant face conveyed nothing but polite interest. She looked absurdly modern in her smart white crêpe de Chine jumper suit, her bare brown arms hanging limply at her sides, and it was certainly odd to hear her speak of such an archaic practice as witchcraft as though she half believed in it.

‘Now I've said it, it sounds stupid,' she remarked. ‘After all, it may not even be true. It's only gossip.'

Campion regarded her quizzically. ‘Did Mrs Munsey ever curse anybody with such startling success before?' he said. ‘How did she build up her business, so to speak?'

The girl shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don't really know,' she said, ‘except that there's a list of witches burnt in 1624 still in the Lady Chapel of the church – this village managed to escape Cromwell, you know – and every other name on the sheet is Munsey. It's partly that, and then – the poor old creature is perfectly bald. In the winter it's all right, she wears a bonnet of sorts, but in hot weather she goes about uncovered. Aunt Di was always trying to be kind to her, but she had an officious way and she annoyed the old biddy somehow. Do you think I'm mad?'

‘My dear young lady,' said her companion judicially, ‘there are lots of rum professions. There's nothing unusual about witchcraft. I used to be a bit of a wizard myself, and I once tried to change a particularly loathsome old gentleman into a seal on a voyage to Oslo. Certainly the vulgar creature fell overboard, and they only succeeded in hauling up a small walrus, but I was never sure whether I had done it or not. They had the same moustaches, but that was all. I've often wondered if I was successful. I went in for wireless accessories after that.'

Penny regarded him with astonishment, but he seemed to be perfectly serious. They were half-way through the wood by this time. The place was a fairyland of cool green arcades with moss underfoot, and a tiny stream meandering along among the tree roots.

She pointed to a patch of sunlight at the far end of the path. ‘That's the entrance to Pharisees' Clearing,' she said. ‘Pharisee means “fairy”, you know.'

Mr Campion nodded. ‘Be careful how you talk about fairies in a wood,' he said. ‘They're apt to think it disrespectful.'

They walked on, and came at last to the edge of the clearing. It was a tiny valley, walled in by high trees on each side, and possessing, even at that hour of the morning, a slightly sinister aspect.

The grey-green grass was sparse, and there were large stones scattered about; a bare unlovely place, all the more uninviting after the beauty of the wood.

The girl paused and shivered. ‘It was here,' she said quietly. ‘As far as I could gather from Will Tiffin, Aunt was lying quite close to this gateway – staring up with that awful look on her face.'

Campion did not move, but stood regarding the scene, his pale face even more vacuous than usual. The girl took a deep breath.

‘Mr Campion,' she said, ‘I've got to tell you something. I've kept quiet about it so far, but I think if I don't tell someone I shall go mad.'

She was speaking impulsively, the quick colour rising in her cheeks.

‘Will Tiffin told me early this morning, and I made him swear not to breathe it to another soul. When he found her she was lying here on her back, not twisted or dishevelled as she would have been if she had lain where she had fallen, but stiff and straight, with her hands folded and her eyes closed. Don't you see –' her voice quivered and sank to a whisper – ‘Will said it looked as if she had been laid out as a corpse.'

—

‘Y
OU'D
be doing me a service, Mr Lugg, if you'd refrain from referring to me as No 705. Sir Percival did my father the honour of forgetting my little lapse twenty-five years ago.'

Mr Branch, a small dignified person in black tie and jacket, paused and regarded his shady old friend with something like appeal in his eyes.

‘No good thinkin' o' that,' he added, dropping his official voice and speaking with his natural Suffolk inflection.

Mr Lugg, himself resplendent in black cloth, sniffed contemptuously. ‘'Ave it yer own way,' he said. ‘Anyway, you nipped that lot out o' the satchel as if you still knew a thing or two.'

He jerked his head towards a pile of water-colours and pencil sketches lying face downwards upon a bureau top. The two men were in one of the smaller bedrooms in the front of the mansion, at present in disuse.

The little man fidgeted nervously.

‘I shan't be happy till they're out of the house,' he said. ‘It's not my regular job to do the packing. The housekeeper would smell a rat immediately if any fuss was made.'

‘There won't be no fuss. 'Ow many more times 'ave I got to tell yer?' Mr Lugg was irritated. ‘Mr Gyrth and my young bloke said they'd take full responsibility. Livin' down 'ere on the fat of the land 'as made you flabby, my son.'

Mr Branch glanced under his eyelashes at the big man opposite him.

‘Your Mr Campion,' he said. ‘I shouldn't be at all surprised if 'is real name didn't begin with a K. And figuring it all out, 'is Christian name ought to be Rudolph.'

Mr Lugg's large mouth fell open. ‘'Ow d'yer make that out?' he demanded.

His friend wagged his head knowingly. ‘A confidential family servant in a big 'ouse gets to know things by a sort of instinct,' he observed. ‘Family likenesses – family manners – little tricks of 'abit, and so on.'

Unwillingly, Mr Lugg was impressed. ‘Lumme!' he said. ‘'Ow did you get a line on 'is nibs?'

‘About an hour ago,' said Branch precisely, ‘I went into Mr Campion's bedroom to see if the maids had done their work. Quite by chance,' he went on studiously, ‘I caught sight of 'is pyjamas. Light purple stripe – silk – come from Dodds. That didn't tell me much. But then I noticed a bit of flannel, sewed in by the firm, across the shoulder-blades. Now that's a silly idea, a woman's idea. Also I fancy I could lay me finger on the only woman 'oo could ever make Dodds do it. Then, a thing like that comes from 'abit – lifelong 'abit. It wouldn't be a wife. It'd 'ave to be a mother to fix it on a chap so's it 'ud last 'im all 'is life. I started thinkin' and remembered where I'd seen it before. Then of course I knew. The gilded bit of aristocracy 'oo comes down 'ere sometimes is just the chap to 'ave a little brother like your young bloke.'

He paused and Mr Lugg was mortified.

‘Branch,' he said, ‘who d'you make me out to be – Doctor Watson?'

It was evident that the butler did not follow him, and Lugg laughed. ‘You're smart, but you've got no education,' he said complacently. ‘What's the point of all this knowledge of yours? What d'you use it for – graft?'

Branch was shocked, and said so. Afterwards he deigned to explain. ‘In the days when 'er Ladyship was alive and we used to entertain,' he said, ‘it was as well to keep an eye on who was in the 'ouse. Oh, I was very useful to 'er Ladyship. She quite come to depend on me. First morning at breakfast when they come in, she'd raise 'er eyebrows at me, ever so faint, if there was any doubt, and if I knoo they was O.K., I'd nod.'

‘Yes?' said Lugg, fascinated by this sidelight into High Life. ‘And if you wasn't satisfied?'

‘Then I'd ignore 'er,' said Branch majestically.