Death Came Softly

by E. C. R. Lorac

  Emmeline sighed with satisfaction. “Eve, darling, how nice! I’d no idea I was coming to anything so superb and luxurious. This room is simply perfect. I feel I’m going to be terribly happy here!”

  “Oh, Emma, I do hope so. I’ve looked forward so much to having you. I only hope you won’t be bored.”

  “It doesn’t seem a bit boring to me so far,” laughed Emmeline Stamford.

  * * *

  “This is just one of the loveliest spots I’ve seen the world over, Mrs. Stamford, and I’ve seen some.”

  It was Bruce Rhodian who spoke. Mrs. Stamford, bathed, changed and refreshed, had come out into the garden with her sister, who had just introduced her two visitors. Rhodian was a dark fellow, about thirty-five, with a lean, bronzed face and bright, dark eyes, attractively set under tilted humorous dark brows. His alert expression and quick, neat movements contrasted with the apparent heaviness and immobility of David Lockersley. The poet was a big, heavily built young man, with a square, pale face, a shock of rather colorless fair hair, and a face which seemed dull and expressionless save for his heavily set gray eyes. Lockersley had very fine eyes, and very observant ones, but he tended to look downward, away from the person addressing him, and thus his face seemed frowning and rather uninteresting. Eve Merrion, who had made friends with the rather detached young poet on account of their mutual interest in gardens, had told him that he ought to wear tinted glasses. His frown, she was certain, was caused by eyesight which could not stand bright sunlight. He had replied that he certainly could not stand having the world spoiled by viewing it through dark glasses, and Eve understood what he meant. Emmeline Stamford, prone to judge people by a conventional standard of her own, labeled him “rather a clod” at first glance. She preferred the quick responsiveness of Rhodian’s dark eyes and easy speech. Leaning back in her chair, she smiled across at him.

  “It is indeed a lovely place. The house is full of charm, and it’s so beautifully set, looking right up this wooded valley.”

  “The house looks down the valley,” put in Keston’s pedantic voice. “The head of the valley is in the other direction, behind the house.”

  “Who cares?” Rhodian retorted cheerfully. “Technicalities of language leave me cold. Whoever fixed on the location of this house did a good job. It’s perfectly set, plumb in the middle of the valley, so that you see the little river and its series of lakes set between the woods. There’s a symmetry about it, somehow—and my word, doesn’t it smell good, the hay and the flowers? It’s grand.”

  Eve was laughing quietly to herself, as she often did, as though enjoying a private joke, and Rhodian turned to her:

  “What is it I’ve said now, making you laugh at me?”

  “It was your phrase about whoever was responsible for the location of the house. According to Father, you’ve got to go a goodish way back to place the responsibility. He suggested that a Roman villa had once stood here when he first contemplated the site.”

  Lockersley put in a word here. “I believe he has a theory now about this level ground on which the house stands being a prehistoric encampment, or something of that kind. He’s found some long barrows up towards Maldon Moor.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, let us eschew archeology and anthropology and all such head-aching topics,” protested Mrs. Stamford. “My youth was haunted by my inability to spell dolichocephalic or comprehend what it meant.”

  Bruce Rhodian laughed, his dark eyes surveying Mrs. Stamford with an expression telling of pleasure as well as amusement.

  “That’s just too bad,” he said. “We’ll leave out the skulls and the jawbones and homo sapiens in the making, and just enjoy the present without debating our predecessors in this glorious spot.”

  Emmeline turned and looked at him laughingly. “Goodness, I’d forgotten. You are an anthropologist, too, aren’t you? You come back from incredibly arduous and hazardous journeys with a collection of bones which all the experts start quarreling about.”

  “Don’t hold it against me,” he begged. “It wasn’t I who marred the peace of the evening with words like dolichocephalic.”

  “What’s the matter with the word, anyway?” inquired Eve’s placid voice, “it sounds to me an eminently peaceful word, pleasantly redolent of learned societies and unwarlike lecture rooms.”

  “But your sister doesn’t enjoy the thought of learned societies and all that,” laughed Rhodian. “She just wants to enjoy a peaceful evening in this garden, untroubled by dissertations on primitive man.”

  “Do you always prefer to take your surroundings for granted, Mrs. Stamford?” inquired Roland Keston, peering at Emmeline rather in the manner a scientist might study an untabulated specimen. “Does the thought of previous inhabitants of this wonderful valley merely repel you?”

  “I haven’t a scientific or an inquiring mind,” replied Emmeline, “and I certainly find it tiresome to regard everything from the point of view of academic research. I agree with Eve that this is a gloriously beautiful spot, and I’m content to leave it at that. I don’t want to analyze it from the point of view of the anthropologist, the geologist, the botanist or the historian, and that’s that.”

  “Would a cigarette amplify the pleasure of the spot?” inquired Rhodian, holding out his case. As he lighted a cigarette for Emmeline, Lockersley bent forward toward Eve.

  “Do you feel the same about things as your sister does, Mrs. Merrion? Does the history of the place you live in seem totally unrelated to the place—an irrelevance, almost an impertinence?”

  Eve sighed a little to herself. She was afraid this party was going to prove none too easy. Eve loved discussion for discussion’s sake, but she did not want to bore her sister. It seemed evident enough that abstract discussions did not entertain Emmeline.

  “No.” Eve’s reply was made direct to David Lockersley. “If I care about a place, I like to know all that I can about it. Actually I have rather a childish tendency to populate these woods with their earlier inhabitants. I imagine all sorts of people—early Britons, and Romans, and medieval folk, inhabiting this valley. I get a bit confused at whiles. Take the Hermit’s Cave, for instance; sometimes I think of real cavemen living there, then I visualize a solitary friar in a rough brown habit, meditating in the archway there. He’s awfully real, my hermit.” She broke off, laughing a little. “I said it was childish, and it is,” she admitted naively, “but I always visualize what Father would call my ‘reconstructions.’ ”

  “But I think you’re probably quite right in your feelings about the cave, Mrs. Merrion,” put in Keston in his earnest, pedantic way. “Undoubtedly it would have been the habitation of primitive man many centuries before any medieval contemplative fashioned it for his dwelling.”

  “I say, what’s this about the Hermit’s Cave?” put in Bruce Rhodian. “Is it a leg-pull, or another amenity of the house?”

  “It’s not a leg-pull. It’s a perfectly good cave,” replied Eve. “It’s in the great scarp of rock to the south of the main entrance. Legend calls it the Hermit’s Cave, and the carvings in it bear out the legend. If you’re interested, you’d better go and have a look at it. Mr. Keston will take you. He and Father are both very interested in it. Father has actually been sleeping there, but he has most eccentric ideas on the subject of sleeping-places.”

  “I should like to see it,” said Rhodian. “We could explore this evening, while the professor is still away, and then we shan’t disturb his meditations there.” He turned to Emmeline. “Won’t you come and explore too, Mrs. Stamford? I’ll run you down the drive in my auto.”

  “Heavens, no, thanks very much. I loathe caves,” replied Emmeline. “Good gracious! Who on earth is that?”

  A small, bent old man with a very bald head, his person enveloped in a capacious white apron, had just appeared around the corner of the house.

  “Mr. Keston, sir, it’s high time ye were in to your meal. It’ll be ready and waiting by the time ye’re seated. Come along now, and don’t
let the good meal be spoiling.”

  “All right, Brady. Thank you. If you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Merrion, I’d better do as I’m told.”

  There was humor as well as kindliness in Keston’s usually too serious face as he turned to Eve, and she replied laughingly:

  “That’s right, Mr. Keston. Off you go! Brady, I’m glad you’re keeping him in order.”

  “Sure to goodness, ma’am, as far as I’m able, though it’s the devil’s own job and all, seven o’clock struck and never a sign of him. You’ll be wanting to wash your hands before you’ll be eating,” he added anxiously to Keston, as the latter went off with the little man quite good-humoredly.

  “Well, really!” said Emmeline, as the oddly assorted pair strolled off together. “Of all the fantastic objects. Does he generally come and collect Mr. Keston as though he were a child and lead him to his meals?”

  “Oh, Brady’s a dear,” said Eve. “He and his wife have looked after Father for years now, and they make a great success of it—the only servants he’s ever had who really managed him happily. While Father’s away they look after Mr. Keston in their own peculiar way.” She turned to Bruce Rhodian, laughing a little. “You haven’t met my father yet, Mr. Rhodian. He’s an extreme individualist and, as such, very difficult to cater for. Like many learned men, he disregards the routine of the average person. I think night and day are the same to him. He sleeps when he feels like it, and eats when the fancy takes him. Breakfast has no place or meaning in his scheme of things. The Bradys have made one rule, and that they abide by. A proper meal is cooked and served at half past seven every evening, and Brady goes and finds Father and Mr. Keston, and takes them firmly indoors for that meal. For the rest they can do as they like; they can eat nuts or raw carrots and contemplate the sun, moon or stars, or prehistoric man, but at half past seven they are bidden to sit down like Christians—as Brady puts it—to ‘a decent meal.’ I have the greatest admiration for Brady. I think he’s a marvel.”

  “I think I like the sound of your father, Mrs. Merrion. I’m looking forward a lot to meeting him,” rejoined Rhodian. “I like the idea of his sleeping in that cave you were telling us about.”

  “Oh, that isn’t nearly so mad as it sounds. It’s a lovely place. I should like to sleep there myself and see the dawn over the lake through that little archway. You must go and have a look at it after dinner. Mr. Lockersley will take you. He likes it, too.”

  “Delighted,” rejoined the poet, his voice resigned, his expression remote. Eve caught young Rhodian’s eye and nearly laughed back; there was something infectious in the quick humor lurking in his glance as he looked from one member of the party to another, taking them all in.

  The sound of a gong came from the house and Eve got up, saying, “Dinner in quarter of an hour, everybody. We always have two gongs.”

  “Very considerate,” murmured Emmeline. She got up, too, and stood looking around her, and then slipped her arm inside her sister’s.

  “It’s lovely here, Eve, but somehow it’s eerie,” she said.

  Eve laughed. “Is it, Emma? I can only see that it’s lovely,” she rejoined.

  3

  After dinner the party of four had coffee in the garden, while the westering sun seemed to fill the still air with a quintessence of radiance, and the massed colors of the rhododendrons took on an almost unearthly loveliness. Eve, solicitous for her sister’s comfort, but still longing to stay out of doors in the glory of the sunset, said:

  “Will you find it too cold if we just go and look at the lake where the hydrangeas are? It always looks so lovely in the evening light.”

  Emmeline shivered a little and drew her fur cape closer around her shoulders. “All right, if it’s not too far. It gets cold in the evenings here.”

  “What about that cave?” Lockersley spoke abruptly to Bruce Rhodian. The former, more sensitive than he looked, had a feeling that Eve would like to be alone with her sister, and his laconic query was his way of telling Rhodian that they might take themselves off for a while.

  “Okay. We’ll go and prospect, Mrs. Merrion.”

  “Yes, do—and come and tell me what you think of it,” rejoined Eve, smiling at Lockersley.

  The two men set off across the lawns, Lockersley leading, until they left the leveled turf and walked through the grass of the rich pasture which sloped down to the river. They followed the stream until they reached the white bridge and crossed it into the shadow of the beeches which overhung the drive. Lockersley strode along, his face set in its habitual frown, ignoring his companion, until Rhodian said:

  “Those two—Mrs. Merrion and Mrs. Stamford—are very unlike.”

  “Yes. I suppose they are. Lots of sisters and brothers are, for that matter,” said Lockersley. “Mrs. Merrion’s more like her father. You don’t know him, do you? He’s an interesting old chap. He was talking about Martin Trent the other day. He was the man who went with you on that Andes expedition, wasn’t he?”

  “Trent? Yes. What does the professor know about him, though?”

  Rhodian sounded surprised, and Lockersley replied:

  “Oh, he knew him when he was a youngster. Professor Crewdon held a chair in one of the American universities some years ago, and he met Trent then. He was rather an odd character—unstable was the word he used. He said he’d be interested to talk to you about Trent—and his oddities.”

  “Did he? Well, poor old Trent’s dead, and his oddities with him, and I don’t know that I’m keen on post-mortems. Trent came rather a mucker in his college career, but he’d got plenty of sand when it was needed. I’ve been through some difficult patches with him while our lives depended on our wits—and guts. . . . Lord! This is a gorgeous place, isn’t it?”

  The golden sunlight was striking through the beech trees, lighting up their smooth gray trunks and the intense red of the rocky scarp behind them, a magnificent piece of color. Rhodian stood still for a moment, staring into the vivid woodlands, his own sunburned face lighted up by the sunset glow. Lockersley, looking at the other, was rather irritably conscious of Rhodian’s good looks, his vital aspect and strong, straight athlete’s figure. He seemed to fit in with the woods and the sunshine, to become part of the colorful landscape. Lockersley, handicapped all his life by poor physique, almost resented the vigor and vitality of his companion.

  “Yes. It’s pretty good,” he said, scorning to put into words his own feelings about the magic of the sunlit woods. He trudged on over the rough drive, and Rhodian walked beside him, swinging along with lithe, easy grace. It was just when they were approaching the red sandstone pillars at the entrance to the Valehead estate that Lockersley said:

  “There’s the cave, up there on your right.”

  Rhodian left the drive and walked over the beech mast to the great scarp of rock where was the shadowy entrance to the cave, and stood staring a moment before he went inside. The entrance was a pointed archway in shape—a lancet—but there was no real arch. The stone had been hewn away to simulate an arch; it gave access to a chamber in the solid rock, some ten feet by eight and perhaps twelve feet high. There was another lancet cut in the rock at one end of the cave, about five feet from the ground. Along one side was a stone slab, six feet long, with a hollow at one end—the hermit’s bed. At its head a niche had been hollowed out of the living rock. Another cavity had been carved out at the foot of the stone couch, forming recessed stone shelves. In the wall facing the head of the couch a great cross was carved into the rocky wall. Rhodian stood in the center of the cave while his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, green-filtered as it came through the overhanging branches of beech.

  “Say, there’s something fantastic about the place. It gives me the creeps,” he said. “Do you really suppose anyone lived here?”

  “Why not?” Lockersley came into the cave and stood on the dry carpet of leaves which covered the rocky floor. “I can imagine worse places to live. It’s dry, and surprisingly warm, and utterly peaceful. Not bad to wake
up on that stone bed and look out into the woods and see the dawn on the lake. You try it. It’s much more comfortable than it looks.”

  The stone couch was strewn with bracken and dead leaves, and Rhodian sat down on it and looked out through the arched entrance to the golden glory of the woods outside.

  “All right in summer, maybe, but in winter—no.”

  “Why not? A good wood fire—the door and lancet are so arranged that the smoke clears away pretty well,” replied Lockersley. “It’d be a damn sight more comfortable than many a Norman castle.”

  Rhodian stretched his long limbs out in the leaf-strewn rocky bed and lay there gazing up at the rock overhead. It had been cut away smoothly to simulate the groining and ribs of a crude vault. He sat up with a shiver.

  “Yes. It’s not so uncomfortable as it looks, I grant you, but it gives me the feeling that all those tons of rock overhead might fall on me at any moment. I’d rather sleep in the open, whatever the weather. I’d feel safer.”

  Lockersley grunted derisively. “Claustrophobic. Depends on your make-up. I like it in here. I understand how the hermit felt in his house. Safe from the world.”

  Rhodian went to the entrance and looked out at the radiant woodlands as he lighted a cigarette.

  “And the old professor actually chooses to spend his nights in this uncanny place?”

  “Yes, quite often. He agrees with me; he has a feeling that a former inhabitant leaves something of himself in the place he has dwelt in. A contemplative bestows something of his own gift on the place where he has meditated. This place has something to give to the contemplative mind. Does that sound sheer drivel to you?”

  “No. Not drivel. I should never laugh in this hole, nor yet laugh at it. It gives me the jitters. It isn’t just a cave, a hole in the rock. It’s something fashioned and studied, and rather horrible.” He turned and reentered the shadowy place as he spoke, and then gave a start as he became aware of someone behind him. “Lord! What’s that?”