The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I think you are being not only unfriendly but rather rude,” she said by way of answer. “We came as a party and we ought to stick together as a party. Besides, you probably know more about stone circles than any of us, so you ought to benefit us by talking to us about them instead of leaving us to play useless guessing games.”

  “Owen knows as much as I do, I daresay. Dog his footsteps and drink in his winged words. Anyway, I’ll be a good boy after this, but I really must take a look at the Castlerigg circle on my own. I have my thesis to think about.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m not coming with you.”

  “You see, Castlerigg holds a mystery,” he said, ignoring this.

  “You won’t tempt me by telling romantic lies,” said Capella.

  “No, really, it isn’t a lie. There is a mystery and I want to solve it.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “You’ll know when you get there. Well, I shall miss my bus if I don’t leave now. Sure you won’t change your mind?”

  “Quite sure. I have a few manners, you see. Besides, people know we went off together before breakfast. They were out on the terrace when we got back.”

  “What of it? Sorry, but I must fly. Be seeing you!”

  “But not again this morning,” thought Capella. She turned to go back into the hotel and almost bumped into Catherine.

  “So where is Stewart off to now?” asked Catherine. “We are almost ready to start.”

  “He isn’t coming with us.”

  “Oh? Oh, I see. Well, then, I think it would be better if you had my seat in the car. It will be a change for both of us if I sit at the back. The nuns are going in Lionel’s car this time.”

  “Well, as I know the way, that sounds a good idea. I can give Professor Owen the route,” said Capella, who did not intend to be ruled by the older woman. When the party had left the cars at Little Salkeld she walked quickly away from Owen and Catherine and, avoiding Clarissa, who had left Lionel on his own to lock up their car, she received a slight smile from Sister Veronica and joined the two nuns.

  The three of them made a solemn perambulation of the stone circle without a word being spoken until Sister Pascal said, “We saw you come back this morning. Did you have a pleasant walk?”

  “It was a drive as well as a walk. Stewart and I came here, as a matter of fact. He wanted to see these stones before he went off to Keswick, so to go before breakfast was his only chance. Shall we go and pay our respects to Long Meg?” She told the nuns the three legends she had heard. In return Capella learned that their convent was not far from Exeter, that the Order was that of St. Endellion (Capella had never heard of it, but, of course, made no mention of the fact), that Veronica taught history at a Catholic High School for girls and had been given permission to join the tour if her application was accepted by Owen, and that Pascal was her prioress and had come “to keep her company.” Capella translated this as come “to keep an eye on her,” but decided that she might have been mistaken in this surmise. It was impossible to imagine the younger nun stepping out of line in things spiritual, temporal, or, in fact, taking any direction but the right one.

  Both nuns were then full of speculation, appreciation, and intelligent questions regarding the stones, their origin, their purpose, and the probable date of their erection, and Capella enjoyed walking round with them.

  When they returned to Owen’s car there was another minor shuffling round of seats and she was asked to take her place behind Lionel again. Clarissa said, as they began their drive back to the hotel for lunch, “I saw you got stuck with the nuns.”

  “Far from it!” Capella protested. “I joined them deliberately. The young one teaches history and I read history in College, so we had a lot in common and there was plenty to talk about. Actually, I don’t believe I ever spoke to a nun before. I’ve always been rather in awe of them and I’m not a Catholic, anyway, so I’ve never been in contact with a convent or a convent school. Besides, they seem ever so much more approachable now that they grow their hair and can show a bit of it on their foreheads. Their habit is simpler, too, and much less austere than it used to be.”

  “I think it’s rather a pity. It makes them look like everybody else. They don’t seem any different from, well, nurses and so forth, do they, especially in that heavenly shade of blue.”

  “They do to me. Anyway, they’re very nice. They belong to the Order of St. Endellion, they tell me.”

  “Oh, well, they have spiritual qualities, no doubt, which are denied to the likes of us,” said Clarissa, ignoring Capella’s comments.

  “Not denied to us. We could have them if we strove for them,” said Lionel, laughing. “I could, anyway.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. There is all that dedication, you know, and their vows—although, mind you, I insisted upon retaining the obedience bit in our marriage service, didn’t I?”

  “Did you?—That seems a strange place to put up a ring of stones. It must have been the deuce of a job on a slope like that.” Lionel had been quick to change the subject, Capella thought. She wondered whether Clarissa was thinking wistfully about a marriage which did not exist.

  “It’s all to do with astrology, darling,” said Clarissa, responding to Lionel’s remarks.

  “No, not astrology, astronomy,” said Capella. “When I was a child my father told us all about it. Various stars are in alignment with various stones at the equinoxes and at other special times. Stewart told me this morning that the Long Meg circle is related to the sun and that the religious rites may have taken place in spring and autumn or even in mid-winter, and that the spirals and rings carved on the outlier may be representations of the sun and have some connection with life and death.”

  “Oh, the alignments are probably quite accidental. Anyhow, let’s hope it isn’t death, so far as we’re concerned,” said Lionel, “although one does become a little superstitious when one thinks of a certain ancient lady and her secretary who have joined our party.”

  “Stewart thinks . . .” began Capella, and then thought better of it.

  “Thinks what?” asked Clarissa.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “You shouldn’t begin a sentence that you don’t intend to finish.”

  “I’ll finish it for her,” said Lionel. “Stewart thinks that one of us is suspected of being a bit short of some of his or her marbles and may be dangerous. Stewart thinks Dame Beatrice has come along in her official capacity to spot the dotty one, that’s all. He was talking to me about it.”

  “Oh, darling, what a frightening idea! Do you mean we’ve got somebody with us who could be a homicidal maniac? I think I’d like to go home!”

  “I think Stewart is talking rot, my dear.”

  “Well, it isn’t very reassuring rot, is it? I mean it’s all too likely that there is some truth in it. After all, why should Dame Beatrice take any interest in stone circles?”

  “Well, why do the rest of us take any interest in them? I’ll tell you. They are interesting objects in themselves and they make a good excuse for a holiday. What more does anybody want?”

  “What I don’t want is to travel to remote places with a murderous lunatic. I shall spend my time keeping an eye on everybody and wondering which of us it is.”

  “It’s probably only a leg-pull on Stewart’s part. It’s very irresponsible of him to put such a story about, but I’m positive there’s nothing in it.”

  “Well, I hope you’re right, but I shan’t have another easy moment. We’re going on to the island of Arran after we’ve seen the Castlerigg stones, you know, and there was a horrid murder committed up on Goatfell. It was a very treacherous affair and only for the sake of a few pounds, I believe.”

  “You shouldn’t read these horror stories if they distress you.”

  “I don’t read horror stories. I was reading up about Arran, as I knew we were going there, and the account was in the book.”

  “What did it say?” asked Capella. “I mean, what happened e
xactly?”

  “Oh, well, these two young men, a Scot named John Watson Laurie and an English tourist called Edwin Rose, met on the boat which went down the Clyde in the July of 1889. Both of them boarded the boat at Rothesay and crossed to Arran and seem to have been complete strangers to one another until they got into conversation on board.”

  “I thought Rose was a Scottish surname,” said Lionel, “but you say he was an Englishman.”

  “Well, Edwin isn’t Scottish. It’s pure Anglo-Saxon. Anyway Rose can be a Jewish name, too. I know some people—”

  “Sorry! Do go on, if Capella wants to hear the story and you want to tell it,” said Lionel, speaking with some impatience.

  “Yes, well, I’ll cut it short because we shall soon be back at the hotel and have to join the others. Anyway, the passengers landed at Brodick and Laurie started off by giving a false name, so it looks as though he meant mischief from the very beginning. He told Rose his name was Annandale.”

  “Considering that he murdered Rose—at least, I suppose that is what you are going to tell us,” said Capella, “how did that become known?”

  “Oh, the two men were together for several days and took holiday lodgings in the same house. They went back to Rothesay and returned to Arran later. To cut the story as short as I can, they climbed Goatfell and from that day Rose disappeared. At the end of the holiday his brother was to meet him in London and got worried when he did not turn up. Finally the Scottish police organised a search of Goatfell and, after a lot of trouble and having to contend with mist and other hazards, they found Rose’s body in a deep gully where every attempt seemed to have been made to cover it up and hide it.”

  Two things surprised Capella about the telling of this story. Clarissa’s dry, factual narrating of it was a very long way from the Frog that would a-wooing go whimsy which Stewart had attributed to her. Moreover, the tale itself appeared to have interested her sufficiently for her to remember the names of both the men, the alias of one of them, and even the month and year of the murder.

  “How did the police know Laurie had done it?” she asked.

  “To begin with, he left his holiday digs without paying his landlady. Previously he had told her that he had climbed Goatfell, which seems pretty stupid of him. Then there was a man named Aitken who had also been on the Rothesay steamer and who knew Annandale as Laurie. Laurie, under his own name, was already known to the police as a thief. Later on, Aitken met Laurie in Glasgow, an accidental encounter, and as the news of Rose’s disappearance had been in all the papers and Aitken had seen the two of them together on the Arran trip, naturally Aitken mentioned it. This seems to have alarmed Laurie so much that he sold the tools of his trade and fled, another piece of stupid behaviour, for there was no suggestion at that point that Aitken entertained any suspicions of Laurie.”

  “Had the police anything in particular to go on?”

  “Oh, gracious, yes! Laurie seems to have been reckless to the point of insanity. He had even been seen on Arran, after Rose’s disappearance, wearing some of Rose’s clothes.”

  Capella thought of Stewart’s predictions again, and wondered how many others among the party shared his suspicions that Dame Beatrice was no seeker after stone circles, but was on the tour to look out for another prospective murderer who might turn out also to be “reckless to the point of insanity.” She said nothing of this at the time, but felt slightly annoyed that Stewart had not made her the sole recipient of his views. She wondered to how many others, besides Lionel and herself, he had confided them.

  When the party had returned to the hotel they found that Stewart had caught a bus which brought him back in time for lunch. He joined Lionel, Clarissa, and Capella at their table for four, and seemed in high spirits.

  “I’ve solved my problem,” he said to Capella while the other two were studying the menu.

  “You mean you’ve decided which of us Dame Beatrice has singled out for special observation?” Her mind was still on Clarissa’s story of the Arran murder.

  “That? Oh, heavens, I was only romancing. Forget it! I’m talking about the Castlerigg problem. I can’t wait to get you round there to see whether you agree with my conclusions. It’s a problem nobody has solved so far.”

  “You will have to share your views with the nuns.”

  “Eh? What are you talking about?”

  “I walked round the Long Meg stones with them this morning and I’m walking round Castlerigg with them this afternoon.”

  “Oh, hang it, no!”

  “Oh, damn it, yes.”

  “I don’t want to share my theories about Castlerigg with anybody but you.”

  “You couldn’t wait to share your theories about Dame Beatrice with Lionel. How many other people have you shared them with?”

  “He only shared them with me because I overheard that part of your conversation in the car and buttonholed him later on about it,” said Lionel, who had finished ordering. “I have very acute hearing, so it will not be worth your while to talk secrets in the back of my car.”

  “I was not talking secrets,” said Stewart. “I don’t suppose I am the only one to speculate upon the significance of the Dame’s presence among us. Bless me!” he added, gazing down at his plate and touching Capella’s foot meaningfully under cover of the table. “There’s a nun in my soup!”

  “Two nuns,” said Capella, prodding his ankle with the toe of her shoe, “and I’m walking round with them this afternoon, as I told you.”

  The remains of about fifty feet of banking at the south and south-south-west of the almost perfect circle of stones at Carles, Castlerigg, indicated the previous existence of a henge. Stewart’s “mystery” was immediately apparent. On the east side of the stones, most of which were still standing, although there were gaps here and there, was a strange little uneven rectangle of low stones which intruded into the circle and covered an area of some thirty by fifteen feet. The low stones of which it was formed were in marked contrast to the tallest stones in the circle. These were grouped mainly on the south side, and the largest stone of all was an immense mass of slate. The whole site was seen against the rounded Derwent hills, especially of Threlkeld Knotts, which flung the tallest stones into high relief, but did nothing to bring the strange rectangle into prominence. It was noticeable only because it cut into the otherwise circular enclosure.

  “One of the finest circles in England,” said Stewart, who, on the strength of having spent most of the morning at the site, had constituted himself showman and guide to the whole party. “The rectangle is particularly interesting. I judge it to have been the most sacred part of the enclosure, probably intended to be entered by nobody except a priest or a king. The same individual was probably both.”

  “I think it could have been the special area where the human sacrifices were carried out,” said Lionel ghoulishly. “If you analysed the soil you would find that at some time it had been drenched in blood.”

  “I don’t think there is any evidence that human sacrifices were carried out,” said Sister Pascal. “One devoutly hopes that there was nothing so dreadful.”

  “Quite,” said Laura Gavin, “but, all the same, Sister, my husband and I had a very strange experience once in the Valley of Rocks at Lynton in North Devon. We had been for a long walk on a hot day in August and were coming back through the V. of R. when we came upon a very large, flat, quite smooth stone. Rather thankfully we took a seat on it, but almost immediately I felt such a sense of horror that I stood up and stepped away from the stone. Well, Dame Beatrice says I’m imaginative and perhaps I am, but my husband is a policeman and any imagination he may possess goes into solving crimes. Apart from that, he is the most practical, hard-headed man I know, and the furthest removed from the elves and fairies, so to speak. However, he got up and joined me and we walked on without a word to one another. In bed that night he said: 'Do you think it was an altar stone?—human sacrifices under a Druid moon?’ I said I had felt most peculiar, but I had no idea why,
and we left it at that, neither of us wanting to pursue the subject.”

  “That’s a very spooky story,” said Clarissa. “There is an outcrop in the Valley of Rocks that’s called the Witches’ Cauldron. I wonder whether there is any connection? There could be some folk-memory, perhaps, of evil deeds.”

  “The stones and boulders in the Valley of Rocks are natural formations which have not been handled by man,” said Catherine in her usual repressive tones. “As for Stewart’s enclosure which he chooses to regard as such a mystery, it reminds me of nothing so much as a sheepfold.”

  “Ah, well,” said Owen, “there is one sheepfold we must all come to, and that is rectangular, too. Human sacrifices? That applies to all of us in the end.”

  “Are you not coming to inspect the little enclosure?” said Sister Veronica, pausing and looking back at Capella, who was standing stock-still as the others followed Stewart.

  “No,” she replied. “There is somebody lying dead in it.”

  Sister Pascal, who had paused beside the younger nun, came back and said,

  “Oh, no, Miss Babbacombe-Starr. I can see clearly between the stones of the little enclosure. I am certain there is nobody inside it and, even if there were, he would not be dead.”

  Capella mastered her moment of panic, laughed and relaxed.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Professor Owen’s remarks were rather macabre, that’s all. Sorry to be so fanciful.”

  “This is one of the true Sun Circles,” Stewart was saying as they joined him. “The sun rises directly over Threlkeld Knotts at the equinoxes, that is to say, when the sun crosses the equator on about March 20 and September 22 or 23. These were especially sacred times to the ancient peoples, because there is some sort of magic abroad when day and night are of equal length. One almost feels it oneself.”

  As with the Long Meg circle, Castlerigg had a definite entrance between portal stones, but whereas that of Long Meg was on the south-west side with the outlier herself acting as a pointer to it, here the entrance pillars (two enormous blocks) were on the north side, over against the hills. Capella and the nuns walked out through the portals, looked at the surroundings which made a natural amphitheatre, and then concluded their peregrination of the stone circle with the others. There was not much more to see.