Sweet Danger (7 page)

Mr Campion removed his spectacles. ‘It sounds worth seeing,' he said mildly. ‘Come on.'

They went quietly out of the inn, tiptoed across the cobbles and sighed with relief as their feet sank into the silencing turf of the heath.

‘It's over there,' said Lugg, pointing to a dark patch of gorse on the uninhabited side of the stretch. ‘Seems funny, don't it? A corpse is one thing, but a laid-out corpse on a blasted 'eath is another. Something shockin' about it.'

Campion was silent, but he quickened his pace and gradually the patch of furze came nearer. When they were within a few yards of the outside edge, a stray cloud passed over the moon and left them temporarily in shadow.

‘'Ere we are.' Lugg's voice was unusually husky. ‘This is the path.'

He plunged down a narrow track, sweeping aside the overhanging branches of prickly yellow flowers as he went. The moon came out from behind the cloud just as they entered the clearing, and the whole scene was once more lit brilliantly.

The clearing was empty, save for themselves.

Mr Campion turned to the speechless Lugg.

‘If we had a snare we might get a rabbit,' he said conversationally.

‘I saw it,' said Mr Lugg hysterically. ‘Look 'ere, you can see for yourself. This is where it was lying.'

He pointed to a roughly made bed of dry bracken and hay in the centre of the clearing, where the moonlight fell uninterrupted.

Campion stepped forward and picked up something lying half hidden by the shadow under a gorse bush. It was a piece of linen about as big as a man's pocket handkerchief. He shook it out gingerly and Lugg grunted.

Scrawled upon the cloth was the sign again, a cross with a cedilla at the top.

‘Well,' said Mr Lugg, whose vocabulary had deserted him. ‘Well, I ask you!'

Mr Campion dropped the rag and wiped his long, pale fingers fastidiously with his handkerchief.

‘Don't, my dear old bird,' he said. ‘Don't. I don't know.'

‘
BUT YESTERDAY A
king,' remarked Mr Campion as he walked across the heath to the mill with Guffy and Eager-Wright the following morning. ‘To-day, a poor gentleman come about the trouble. There's a natty line in cheap philosophy somewhere there.'

‘We drop the Hereditary Paladin business, then?' said Eager-Wright, not without relief.

Campion nodded. ‘From now on,' he said primly, ‘I get no more respect than my naturally superior intellect deserves.'

Guffy, who had not been listening to the conversation, but who had been surveying the scene with approval, turned. On the soil of his own county he was no longer the diffident, affable soul he had been on the Continent. Here he was a man of information.

‘What a pity they took down the old house,' he said. ‘It must have been rather fine.' He indicated a mound of parkland which rose out of a wooded stretch on their right. ‘Quite a nice little bit of shooting, still, I should say,' he went on. ‘Not hunting country. That must be the rectory over there by the church, I suppose.'

The three young men glanced towards the slate roof of the modern house they had noticed from the car, and Eager-Wright uttered the general thought.

‘It may not be very easy to go prowling about in those woods,' he said. ‘Still, I imagine we've got the place to ourselves.
Widow's Peak would hardly hang about after his colossal blunder in attacking Miss Huntingforest, or whatever her name is.'

Guffy, who was becoming more of the fine old country gentleman at every step, beamed.

‘Now we're actually here,' he said, ‘I feel that no beastly London magnate with his dirty little crooks can put up much of a show against us.'

Eager-Wright grinned, but Mr Campion remained impassive.

‘I don't know whether it's occurred to you,' he said diffidently, ‘that our big business friend, Savanake, is employing Widow's Peak and Sniffy Edwards at the moment because he's at the disadvantage of having led a more or less upright life for the past year or two. Any moment now it may occur to him to get hold of something rather better class in the crook line. That's why we've got to hurry. You know: haste is essential. The early birds get the worm. First reasonable offer will conclude deal. You all know how I got the V.C. at Rorke's Drift, but in spite of my well-known intrepidity, which you all admire so much, I should be glad to get the Mother's Union prizes safely under lock and key before Savanake undertakes the job himself. Hullo, here we are.'

They had left the heath now and turned down the narrow lane to the mill. Here, spread out before them, was the real rustic loveliness of Suffolk at its best. In spite of the industry of Miss Amanda and her assistant it was evident that the mill did little business, for the track was grass-grown and culminated in a rough patch of green which sloped gently down to a white-flecked race. The mill itself, a great white wood and brick building, sprawled across the stream into the meadow on the opposite bank, and beside it stood the house.

If there had been any doubt that the millers of Pontisbright had once been prosperous folk, it must have been
instantly dispelled. The house was a nearly perfect example of late fifteenth-century architecture. Its wattle-and-daub walls were plastered over and ornamented with fine mouldings. Big diamond-pattern casement windows bulged beneath rust-red tiles, and the whole rambling place suggested somehow the trim blowsiness of a Spanish galleon.

The charm of the place was increased by faded chintz curtains billowing through the open windows, and the gleam of polished wood from within. Even a remarkably complex wireless aerial festooned across the roof had a rustic and archaic look.

There was one startling anachronism, however. Drawn up before the door was an extremely ancient but unmistakable electric brougham. This remarkable vehicle had been painted crimson by an inexpert hand, and now sat, squat and self-conscious, blushing violently for its own age.

As they came nearer they saw that the original upholstery, long since defunct, had been replaced by the same variety of faded chintz that adorned the house.

Guffy stared at the apparition in respectful astonishment.

‘That looks like the thing the guv'nor paid a man in Ipswich ten quid to take away, the year of the war,' he said. ‘What an extraordinary thing!' He paused and looked about him dubiously. ‘I say, there's rather a lot of us,' he ventured. ‘Suppose you two go and make the arrangements? I'll wait for you.'

‘Grand old man seized with social funk,' said Eager-Wright. ‘Come on, Campion.'

From the moment they approached the front door, an air of faintly hilarious unreality descended upon the whole proceedings. As soon as Eager-Wright knocked the door was swung open with suspicious celerity by a person who was easily recognizable from the landlord's description as Scatty Williams.

The man really was amazingly like a duck. His head was very bald and very white, but his face was a yellowish tan.
There was a ring just above his ears which showed quite clearly where his hatband finished, and his face and neck were exposed to the elements. Two little bright blue eyes almost hidden by shaggy grey eyebrows were set close together beside the narrow bridge of an enormous nose, which splayed out at the tip so very like a duck's bill that one almost expected him to quack. To add to the incongruousness of his appearance he was wearing a white dress waistcoat of ancient cut which had been fitted with white sleeves, so that it faintly resembled a cocktail jacket. For the rest, however, he was arrayed in corduroy trousers, enormous boots and a very bright blue shirt without a collar.

He beamed at the visitors, and it dawned upon them that he was one of those people whose natural qualities unconsciously exaggerate every emotion they may happen to feel. His smile of welcome was transformed, therefore, into a horrific grin of pure joy.

‘Come in, come in,' he said before they could speak, and then, pulling himself together, he added with a gravity which was as portentous as his delight had been vivid: ‘You'll be the gentlemen who were thinkin' o' staying here? What name shall I tell the lady?'

Eager-Wright shot an enquiring glance at his companion.

‘Mr Wright and Mr Campion,' said the pale young man firmly.

Their guide, mumbling the names over to himself so that he should not forget them, led the visitors over a sweet-smelling, stone-flagged hall into a low, very dimly-lit room in which dark masses of furniture loomed indistinctly.

The room really was absurdly dark. Eager-Wright stumbled over a chair as soon as he entered and regained his feet with a muttered apology, to find himself looking down at someone who had come forward to meet him with outstretched hand.

‘Hullo,' said a clear, unexpectedly vibrant female voice. ‘I mean, how do you do? I'm Amanda Fitton. The house is
extremely old and very picturesque. There are remarkable fac – fac – well, advantages for bathing, boating, fishing, walking, and – er – motoring.'

There was a pause for breath and a clatter as Campion kicked a side table in his attempt to step up beside his companion.

‘Perhaps you saw the car outside?' continued the voice with a barely concealed note of pride in its tone.

‘The food is good,' she hurried on. ‘Home-cooked and – er – liberal. If you are delicate the water is very good here. You can have as much milk and butter and eggs as you can eat.'

As the visitors made no sound, if the laboured breathing of Eager-Wright could be discounted, the voice continued, this time with a hint of desperation in its depths:

‘There is rough-shooting in the autumn and, no doubt, golf on the heath. The food is good,' she repeated rather lamely, ‘and would five guineas be too much? There are three of you, aren't there? Three and a man?'

‘Five guineas each?' enquired Eager-Wright.

‘Oh, no! Five guineas altogether. Or we could make it pounds. We can take you for as long as you like, and the beds are good.'

There was a pause and the voice became unexpectedly wheedling.

‘You will come, won't you? We've got electric light in some of the rooms, and the mill doesn't make much noise, really, and Scatty and I – I mean Williams – can work it when you're out.'

‘That sounds very fine,' said Mr Campion's vague, idiotic voice out of the dusk. ‘Let me give you our recommendations. We're all house-trained, to start with. Good-tempered and, except for Lugg, remarkably well-mannered. We dislike hot and cold water, modern improvements, inside sanitation, central heating, and expensive wall-paper. My friend here – Mr Wright – who appears to have fallen over something
else, is engaged on a book about rural Suffolk, while I am partly assisting him and partly on holiday. Lugg is very useful about the house, and we had intended to pay three guineas a week each. Do you think we shall suit you?'

Once again there was silence in the gloom and then the voice remarked unexpectedly: ‘Do you mind shabby furniture? Tears in things, I mean.'

‘Nothing, in my opinion,' said Mr Campion firmly, ‘gives a house more old-world charm than tears in furniture.'

‘Oh, well,' said the voice, ‘in that case let's have a little light on things. Stand by while I pull up the blinds.'

They heard her moving cautiously across the room and then, with a great rattle of rings, the curtains were thrown back, and what had once been a pleasantly furnished room came into sight.

It was certainly true that there were tears in the furniture. Even the best brocade wears out in time, and the delicate rose and blue coverings of the formal settees and wing armchairs had been mended and remended until they would stand repair no longer. The Brussels carpet was so threadbare that only faint indications of pattern remained, and everything in the room which age could mar, in spite of care, had been spoiled long before.

Miss Amanda's visitors, however, were oblivious of these details. Their interest was not unnaturally centred upon the girl herself.

Amanda Fitton, eighteen next month, was at a stage of physical perfection seldom attained at any age. She was not very tall, slender almost to skinniness, with big honey-brown eyes, and an extraordinary mop of hair so red that it was remarkable in itself. This was not auburn hair nor yet carroty, but a blazing, flaming, and yet subtle colour which is as rare as it is beautiful. Her costume consisted of a white print dress with little green flowers on it, a species of curtaining sold at many village shops. It was cut severely, and was rather long in the skirt.

There was something artificially formal in her whole appearance. Her hair had been dressed rather high on her head and certainly in no modern fashion.

She eyed them calmly with the inquisitive, but polite, regard of a child.

Eager-Wright was staring at her with frank admiration. Mr Campion, as usual, looked merely foolish.

She shrugged her shoulders eloquently. ‘Well, now you've seen the room,' she said, ‘and you know the worst. Or very nearly the worst,' she corrected herself quickly. ‘All the rooms want doing up a bit, but the beds really are good. And the food really could be absolutely marvellous if you did pay three guineas a week each,' she added with a sudden burst of naïveté.

‘Oh, well, then, that's fixed up,' said Eager-Wright with tremendous satisfaction.

She smiled at him, a wholly disarming gesture which opened her mouth into a triangle, and revealed very small white even teeth.

‘Wait!' she said. ‘You'll have to find out sooner or later. You may as well hear it all. Of course this is very awkward, but then you can always have one of those flat round ones, and I don't mind fetching water. We could have the copper alight all day. And if you wanted one when you came in – in the evening or anything – we could just get it out of the copper in a pail. Four pails makes a really good one. Besides, if you've never had one in those round things it's rather fun. After all, you are on holiday and there'll be bathing.'