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The roundabout way added several miles to their journey, for it skirted the perimeter of the Heronshaw property, which was bounded by a high stone wall beyond which all one could see was the massed trees which stood as sentinels, guarding the privacy of the owners.

To Meg there was something forbidding, even threatening, about their close growth. It suggested a determination to keep the rest of the world at bay, and that, it was evident, was exactly what the present owner intended to do. Involuntarily she shivered.

“Cold?” Uncle Andra asked abruptly. “Not surprising. Look at those clouds!” He pointed to the great shaggy clouds which lay directly ahead of them, edged with an ominously trailing grey fringe. “Not more than a mile or so away and coming our way. I hope we reach the cottage in time.”

But he was too optimistic. Within a short time the rain began to fall, at first with no more than drizzling persistence. Then—the deluge! Borne on a gusty wind, the rain lashed at them relentlessly. Distant scenery was entirely blotted out even that near at hand was vague and misleading. The windscreen wipers did their best and Meg put her headlights on, but even so visibility was very bad.

“Uncle Andra, I think we ought to stop until this has passed over,” she said despairingly. “It’s really not safe—” and the car confirmed that with a skid she only corrected with difficulty.

“But we’re nearly there now,” Uncle Andra said obstinately. “Only a hundred yards or so until we come to the lane which will take us to the cottage, and once there—”

So, gritting her teeth, Meg kept going, hoping that perhaps conditions might be better once they were off the main road. In fact, they were worse. The lane was little more than a cart track, deeply rutted, muddy and waterlogged. Meg bumped and slithered down its length, •thankful when at last Uncle Andra exclaimed:

“Here we are!”

Cautiously Meg applied her brakes and slumped forward over the wheel, too unnerved to take any interest in her surroundings. It was Uncle Andra saying
“Good lord!”
in a horrified voice which eventually roused her.

“Look! ” he urged hoarsely, pointing a shaking finger in the direction of the cottage. “It’s—it’s little more than a ruin!”

And Meg, peering through the lessening rain, saw that he was right. There was a big hole in the roof where the slates were off. The front door, sagging drunkenly from its hinges, had been only carelessly forced back into position. Upstairs, windows, their glass shattered, were even now battering themselves against the wall. And the walls themselves—! The cottage was built of local stone, but at some time or other it had been roughly whitewashed. Now, peeling and discoloured, it added considerably to the general air of desolation. And as if that wasn’t enough to daunt the stoutest heart, the garden was a wilderness. The grass of the little plot grew waist-high, what should have been beds were overgrown with weeds and plants which, untended for goodness knew how long, rampaged unchecked and neglected. As a final straw, the rambler rose which had been trained up the front of the cottage was tom away from the wall and lay straggling on the ground. Altogether, a picture of utter decay.

“Oh no!” Meg breathed incredulously. “Are you sure this is the right place, Uncle Andra?”

“Only too sure,” Uncle Andra assured her grimly. “I’m sorry, Meg, I have landed you in a mess! I had no idea—that solicitor didn’t give me a hint—”

‘It is discouraging,” Meg admitted. It was the under
statement of all time, but she didn’t want to make too much of it because Uncle Andra was so dreadfully upset. “Well, anyway, the rain has stopped. Let’s go and prospect at close quarters, shall we?”

They had difficulty in opening the little gate of the low picket fence, and even then there were difficulties ahead. The stone path leading to the front door was covered with a thick layer of muddy earth washed out from the flower beds which made the going treacherous. Suckers from rose bushes, grown to an inordinate length, clung round their ankles—

When they at last reached the front door Uncle Andra took a firm hold of it, forced it into an upright position and with difficulty opened it sufficiently for them to squeeze in. They were met with an appalling smell of mildew and general decay. The cottage had been built on the two-up and two-down plan with, Meg discovered later, a dismal little lean-to kitchen built of wood and stuck on to the back of the cottage as an afterthought. The front door opened directly into the larger of the two lower rooms and from it opened two other doors, one leading to the kitchen, the other to the second room. Shut off by a cupboard door was a staircase so steep as to be little more than a ladder. Even at its best the room must always have been draughty and difficult to warm, but now, neglected and exposed to the weather as it was, there was a chill which struck to the very hearts of the two silent visitors.

Rain which had penetrated the damaged roof had seeped through the floor, had brought down plaster of the downstairs ceiling and had left the wallpaper hanging in mildewed shreds. The stone floor sweated dampness and the old-fashioned iron grate was red with rust. Nor was the furniture—such as there was—in any better case. The basketwork chair sagged dismally and mice had nested in its faded cushions. The table, short of one leg, had been propped up with beer crates. The small cupboard, its door half open, revealed nothing but broken crockery and a few rusty tins. The glass of an old clock which hung crookedly on the mildewed wall was broken and one hand had been bent forward so that it was almost at right angles to the face.

But worst of all was the floor. It was a mess of wet, crumpled newspapers, greasy paper which must once have wrapped food and empty cardboard milk cartons.

Meg gave a little gulp. So this was their dream cottage! They hadn’t, of course, expected that the place would be in apple-pie order and they had brought sleeping bags as well as sufficient food to see them through for a day or so. They had even brought a pressurised picnic cooker, but with a sinking heart, Meg knew that their forethought was insufficient. It was out of the question that they should stay here even for a single night. Her lips parted to tell Uncle Andra so when he made it clear that for the time being at least, he was preoccupied with some other problem.

“I don’t understand it,” he announced. “How can the place have got into such a mess?”

“Well, we don’t know how long Nanny was in hospital, do we?” Meg reminded him. “And houses soon show if they’re neglected.”

“Not like this,” Uncle Andra insisted with a decisive sweep of his hand. “There’s more here than simply neglect. Someone—a tramp, perhaps—has made use of the place, and in addition there’s been downright vandalism. That clock hand, for example. Do you think a mouse or even a rat could have done that? There were human hands at work there, and the same goes for the front door. Someone found it locked and forced their way in by levering it off the hinges. Then those broken slates—they were deliberately broken with the intention of letting the rain in.” He paused for a moment, his face troubled. “I don’t like it, Meg. There’s been very real malice at work here !”

“I think you’re right,” Meg said with a shiver. “But who? I mean, it’s so—so mean and spiteful. Who could have felt like that towards a harmless old woman like Nanny?”

“I don’t know,” Uncle Andra said grimly. “But believe me, I intend to find out. And there’s something
else I don’t like, Meg—the condition of the garden. I know Ellen says I regard Blytheburn through rose-tinted glasses, but one thing I’m sure of. In the old days, Nanny’s garden would have been tended in her absence and a kindly eye would have been kept on the cottage itself. People were like that then, and if they’d been lacking in neighbourliness then Sir Gregory would have told them to get on with it! Not that this cottage was his property, though it did belong to the family in years past, but just out of sheer goodness of heart. No, I don’t understand it, and I don’t like it. There’s something wrong somewhere—and I’ve a feeling that his high and mightiness, Sir Hector, is at the bottom of it!”

“Perhaps he is,” Meg agreed. “Though I think it would perhaps be wiser not to jump to conclusions! Anyway, at the moment there’s something else we’ve got to decide. We can’t stop here tonight. It’s out of the question. So what are we going to do?”

“Oh, I suppose we’ll have to find a hotel or something,” he said rather vaguely, and looked so suddenly tired and dispirited that Meg took the matter in her own hands.

“Is there anything in Blytheburn?” she asked hopefully, but Uncle Andra shook his head.

“No. The Heronshaw Arms is just a little local pub. They don’t cater for visitors.”

“Wait a minute, I’ve just thought of something,” Meg said suddenly. “Just before we got to the Blytheburn turning, there was a signpost on the other side of the road pointing to Netherbyre—there may be something there.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Uncle Andra said with a disparagement which made it clear that in his opinion nothing good could come out of Netherbyre. Meg smiled faintly, remembering that there had always been rivalry between the two small townships. She could only hope that times had changed and that Uncle Andra was out of date once again.

“I’m going to look in the road book,” she said resolutely. “Because if there isn’t anything there, we’ll have
to go back miles and miles—”

To her relief, there was a two-star hotel at Netherbyre and what was more, it had a rosette for specially good cooking.

“Thank goodness for that!” Meg said fervently. “I only hope they can take us. What’s more, we’d better get there as quickly as possible, Uncle Andra. There’s another cloud threatening.”

Uncle Andra offered no objections—indeed, there was nothing else they could do in the circumstances. But he was still brooding over the tragic little cottage and he sat silent and morose beside Meg. Mercifully the rain kept off and they reached the hotel without mishap. It turned out to be of the country house type and as they drew up outside it, Uncle Andra sat erect.

“Good lord, it’s the old Malvern place!” he exclaimed. “But they’ve built on to it—ruined the whole thing, of course!”

Meg, however, had no fault to find. To her the prospect of a hot bath and a change of clothes, to say nothing of a well prepared meal later on, made her blind to any architectural faults the hotel might have. She only hoped that the accommodation they wanted was available. To be turned away now would be the last straw.

But their luck had changed. Yes, the pleasant young man at the reception desk told them, there were two single rooms available, each with its own bathroom. He turned the visitors’ book round for them to sign. It seemed to Meg that his expression became just a little more alert as he read the two signatures.

“How long will you require the rooms, Mr Ainslie?”

“For at least a week,” Meg said firmly before Uncle Andra had time to reply. “Perhaps longer. Will that be all right?”

“Oh, quite,” the young man said cheerfully. “The season is tailing off now. Which reminds me, I must warn you that we close at the end of October—after that the weather isn’t sufficiently reliable to attract visitors. In fact, it’s already begun to break.”

“Yes,” Meg said feelingly. “We noticed that!”

The man, evidently the manager, smiled sympathetically. He was rather nice-looking, Meg thought critically, modem both in his choice of clothes and the style of his haircut, but not to an exaggerated degree. He was tall and on the slim side, but he had a certain wiriness about him which suggested both energy and astuteness.

He turned now and took two keys from their hooks.

“I think you’ll like these rooms,” he remarked as he handed the keys over. "You may find the furniture rather old-fashioned, but we decided that it suited the older part of the house too well for it to be refurnished with modem stuff.”

“We?” Uncle Andra said sharply.

“My father and I,” the man explained, hesitated for a moment and then added: “As a matter of fact, this used to be our home, but—” he shrugged his shoulders. Times are hard and we had the choice of selling up or making the place pay. We decided to do that.”

Meg felt a little surprised that he should have volunteered so much information to absolute strangers, but Uncle Andra was interested for another reason.

‘‘Your home?” he repeated. “Then your name is—”

“Malvern,” the man nodded. “I’m Jeremy Malvern and I manage the place now that Father isn’t as fit as he was.” He paused and smiled rather diffidently. “He’ll be delighted to meet you again, sir!”

“D’you mean to say you knew me by name?” Uncle Andra asked, gratified in spite of his earlier scorn of Netherbyre.

This time Jeremy grinned boyishly.

“Yes, indeed. Your father was the doctor at Blytheburn and you yourself lived here as a boy. Besides—” he hesitated momentarily, “it’s been common knowledge for weeks that old Nanny Sturt left you Rose Cottage, so—” He stopped in mid-sentence as if he rather regretted having begun it.

H’m, yes, I suppose so.” Uncle Andra didn’t seem quite so pleased now. “Well, I’ll look forward to meeting
your father. Maybe he can tell me—” and this time it was Uncle Andra who left his sentence in mid-air. Jeremy glanced at the hall clock.

“I’ll be opening the bar in another half hour,” he said. “Would you and Miss Ainslie care to join my father and me there when you’re ready?”

Uncle Andra accepted the invitation and they went up to their rooms followed by the porter with their luggage. The rooms were pleasant and Meg liked the furniture. It was old-fashioned, but it looked so right that Meg suspected it was the furniture which had been there in the days when this was a home and not a hotel, and she thought sympathetically that it couldn’t be very pleasant to have to take all and sundry into your home because otherwise you couldn’t afford to live in it yourself. Not that Jeremy had made a fuss about it. She thought that was rather admirable—

Meg had her bath and it was just as enjoyable as she had hoped it would be. Fresh undies added to her sense of wellbeing and she was happily conscious of rising spirits as she slipped into a gaily patterned dress which was one of her favourites. Great scarlet poppies flaunted over a white background and the combination of colours was just right for her colouring. She combed through her long auburn hair and taking a final look in the old cheval mirror, decided that she didn’t look too bad.