The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I believe these monuments are difficult to date,” said Sister Pascal, “as so few artefacts have been excavated.”

  “Burl puts the two circles we have seen as of probable Neolithic date,” said Sister Veronica. “They are extremely large, have well-marked entrances and consist of a very large number of stones. The small rectangle is an unusual feature, I believe, but whether Mr. Stewart’s explanation is the right one it is not possible to judge.’

  “I really thought I saw someone lying there,” said Capella, who had recovered completely from her fright, “but why I should have concluded that it was a dead body I cannot imagine.”

  “Oh, the stones cast strange shadows when the sun is beginning to decline; that is to say, once it is past the meridian,” said Sister Veronica, in the easy, comforting tone which she would have used to a frightened child at her school, thought the amused and now tranquil Capella. She laughed and agreed and was about to change the subject when Sister Veronica added, “There is something very strange about stone circles, all the same. I have been deluded, too.”

  “What do you mean, Sister?” demanded Pascal, stiffening her already uncompromising back and halting in her tracks to look severely at the younger nun. “It does not do to become fanciful.”

  “No, indeed, Sister,” Veronica meekly agreed, “and, of course, we are a large party. There are nine of us, even when Mr. Stewart is not here, and there are ten of us here this afternoon because he is present.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Sister Pascal relaxed a little and looked more kindly upon the young nun.

  “Only that at the Long Meg circle and also here I have received the impression that we were—that we had been joined by an extra member. This morning I thought I counted ten of us, and at this place I thought, when we walked over to the little enclosure, that we numbered eleven,” confessed Veronica, looking down at her stout black shoes.

  “Oh, you are a little confused because Mr. Stewart is such a bird of passage,” said Sister Pascal. “He is with us one minute and absent the next or, in this case, vice versa.” She spoke firmly and Sister Veronica replied, with the same meekness of demeanour and utterance,

  “Thank you, Sister. Yes, that would account for it, of course. How silly of me not to have thought of it for myself.”

  Capella, who was trying to quell a resurgence of her own former panic, received a strong impression that Sister Veronica found the explanation anything but satisfactory. Laura, who, with Dame Beatrice, had joined Capella and the nuns, said as lightly as she could, “Oh, well, we can’t expect to have the sites strictly to ourselves. They are public property, after all, so an odd bod is bound to pop up in the party every now and again.”

  Going back in the car with Stewart, Capella said to him, “Would you call Sister Veronica a fanciful person?”

  “Fanciful? In what way?”

  “Seeing things which aren’t there.”

  “Well, those women lead such an unnatural sort of life that I wouldn’t be surprised at anything they might see.”

  “Sometimes I wonder whether it isn’t the best kind of life, the one they lead.”

  “Oh, come, now! This is morbid. Snap out of it. What’s the matter with you?”

  “That enclosed rectangle of yours—”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Most people do, whether they admit it or not. You dare the most didactic sceptic to spend a night alone in a haunted house and see how he reacts!”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Why did you ask it?”

  “Because there is something—oh, never mind!”

  “But I do mind. Out with it.”

  “I suppose your place of sacrifice was empty until one of our people walked inside and lay down in it?”

  “Nobody did that.” He put his hand over hers. “You’re suffering from a touch of the sun, my dear.”

  “There hasn’t been enough sun for that.”

  “Look, you’re an imaginative sort of young thing and these stone circles can have a curious effect on some people.”

  “They have on me,” said Clarissa from the front seat. “I call them extremely frightening, especially when Lionel talks about blood and human sacrifices, and Professor Owen says rectangles only remind him of coffins and cemeteries.”

  This put an end to conversation and the journey, in any case, was a short one. When they got back to Penrith, Stewart invited Capella to have tea with him in a small café which made its own cakes. She accepted and over the meal she said, “May I talk seriously to you?”

  “I wish you would,” he replied, without a trace of flippancy. “I take it that you want to continue the conversation which Clarissa interrupted. I don’t wonder she’s nervous.”

  “You think these stone circles have the same effect on her as they do on me and, I think, on Sister Veronica?”

  “I wasn’t referring to stone circles, but to the curious relationship between Clarissa and Lionel. That’s why she’s nervous.”

  “There isn’t anything curious about the relationship between a husband and wife, especially when they are young and very fond of one another.”

  “How do you know they’re a married couple?”

  “Clarissa said she had insisted upon keeping the ‘obey’ clause in their wedding service.”

  “And Lionel immediately and most ungallantly changed the subject, I’ll bet.”

  “Well, yes, he did. I was rather surprised. Tell me what you think about them.”

  “I am not a pupil in the school for scandal, therefore I don’t think anything at all about them if I can help it. Look, you don’t really want to talk about Lionel and Clarissa. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Rectangles. I’ve always had a dread of them since I was ten and was taken to see somebody’s grandmother in her coffin. I dream about them.”

  “Bad luck, but you’re a big girl now. Snap out of it.”

  “I can’t. I’m sure I saw somebody lying in that rectangle of yours.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You’re wildly suggestible, that’s all. You heard that ass Lionel talking about blood and human sacrifices and that was enough to start your imagination going.”

  “That’s all very well about me, but what about Sister Veronica? She says that when you are not with us the party still numbers ten, and when you are with us it numbers eleven.”

  “Dear, dear! It strikes me that she ought to consult Dame Beatrice professionally.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE TRUTH GAME

  “Now speak to me, blankets, and speak to me, bed

  And speak, thou sheet, inchanted web

  And speak, my brown sword that willna lee . . .”

  Border Ballad—Cospatrick

  “Our group,” said Dame Beatrice to Laura as they drove back to the hotel, “appears to have fused. I foresee a gathering in the lounge after dinner tonight with polite, insincere conversation, a projection of the ego which persists in all of us, and possibly, if young Mr. Stewart is allowed by Miss Catherine to organise it, some small degree of the conviviality induced by the introduction of spiritous liquors into the human interior.”

  “A feast of reason and a flow of song, if not of soul,” said Laura. “Oh, well, God bless the gregarious instinct! You mentioned Stewart, though. He strikes me as a bit of a loner. Have you put him on your list?”

  “What list? As for his preferring his own company at times to that of the rest of us, I understand that he is working on a thesis and is impatient of too many distractions while we are what the film people call ‘on location.’ ”

  “He’s found one distraction, anyway, or my eyes and instincts deceive me.”

  “You refer to the attraction Miss Babbacombe-Starr appears to have for him, no doubt. I say ‘appears’ because I think perhaps there is a bigger fish than the young Capella in his pond.”

  “I spotted him playing foots
y-footsy with her under cover of the table.”

  “I, too, but I fancy she responded with a firm ultra licitum.”

  “Good for her. Is she on your list? She’s an odd young bod, I feel. She’s what those two old dears in the Gary Cooper film would call pixylated.”

  “But, according to them, everybody of their acquaintance was pixylated.”

  “Do I discern a back-handed compliment in that trenchant observation?”

  “If the cap fits . . .”

  “Anyway, that kid isn’t normal. You must have noticed it.”

  “It is not abnormal to be in a state of indecision tinged with alarm.”

  “Why should she be in such a state?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she has confided in the nuns.”

  “She might do worse, although Sister Pascal strikes me as a pretty tough egg. Honestly, though, haven’t you got a little list?”

  “Of people on this tour who are in need of a psychiatrist? Certainly not. I am here on holiday.”

  “Yes, I know, but if there isn’t something behind it I can’t make out why I was invited to come with you. You may have been invited to lend what the housemaid called ‘an air of respectability,’ you being who and what you are and so shedding lustre on any gathering, and all that, but why me? And I know I was included, because I saw Owen’s letter and I typed the answer. I suppose I am here to take down your case notes, that’s all.”

  “You are far too modest. As the wife of an Assistant Commissioner—”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean. As the wife of an Assistant Commissioner I don’t have any place in a gathering of this kind; as your secretary, a taker of notes, a recipient of confidences with regard to case histories, a bodyguard if necessary when the patients turn violent, I might have my uses, however slight, but none of that connects up with this trip unless . . .”

  “As usual, you are allowing your imagination to run away with you. Why should you not have been invited for the mere pleasure that your company gives me?”

  “All right. I still think there’s more behind it than that. All the others answered an advertisement. Why should we have been singled out for an invitation? There must be something behind it.”

  “I am sure that Professor Owen’s cousin, Miss Catherine, was invited.”

  “Members of a family don’t count. They oil themselves in, whether they’re invited or not, if the binge seems geared to their advantage.”

  “I am sure that cannot apply to members of your own family.”

  “Oh, the Menzies clan is different. Geal is Dearg a suas! Up with the White and Red! We’ve even got a different kind of tartan from everybody else.”

  “So much independence might smack of arrogance to the Sassenach mind.”

  “Be that as it may, I’m not the only member of this gathering who thinks that a-hunting you will go.”

  “You are utterly mistaken. I met Professor Owen once when I addressed the faculty of law at his University. The invitation stemmed from that encounter, I am certain.”

  “Well, nobody else thinks so, and that doesn’t account for my inclusion. Hasn’t he dropped any hints?”

  “Not so far as I am aware.”

  “Oh, well, it’s early days yet. I expect he’s waiting until you’ve had a chance to sum people up.”

  “I should not dream of doing such a thing on the lines which you are suggesting, and I am not going to indulge in any wild speculations merely for your amusement.”

  “Good heavens, of course not! I must say, though, that young Capella’s nerves and Stewart’s exclusiveness in sneaking off the way he did this morning, coupled with that aggressive, good-looking Catherine woman, let alone Lionel and Clarissa having those curiously linked, light-opera names—well, dash it all, you must admit that Owen’s invitation to you and me does give food for thought.”

  “I am glad you have something other than stone circles to occupy your mind.”

  “Well, so far as I am concerned, they lack the excitement of a border war or the glamour of an evening at the ballet, but let that pass. I’ll tell you another thing, though. I think Stewart or one of the others has been putting it about that the circles on Arran are a lot less interesting than some on the mainland of Argyll, and Clarissa says that a particularly beastly murder took place on the island towards the end of last century. She contends that Goatfell, that great mountain, got itself a bad name as a result. Personally, I think it’s a lot of hooey. Arran is a lovely island and holiday-makers who go there every year don’t give a hoot for the story of the one murder which took place there.”

  “And why should they? One swallow does not make a summer and, if you will forgive a slight play upon words, neither does one swallow make a drunkard, or one swallow make a sick man whole. I wonder what ulterior motive Mr. Stewart has in not wishing to visit the island?”

  “He knows of something on the mainland which he needs for his thesis and there isn’t time to visit that and Arran, too, because of the hotel bookings. That’s my guess.”

  “Most reasonably argued, and I shall be surprised if his point of view does not sway others. All the same, as I understand it, our itinerary does not include an ascent of Goatfell. The remains we are to visit form a complex of stone circles and cairns on the west side of the island, the part known as Machrie Moor. I hope the weather will remain clement, although I believe rain is forecast. The spot, from what I remember of it when I went there years ago, is exposed and without any shelter in sight. To a Highlander, such as yourself, to be wet and chilly means nothing, but both Catherine and Clarissa appear to be more vulnerable, and as we are to return to Ardrossan from Arran, there can be no question of a hot bath and a change of clothing until after we have left the ferryboat and are back in the hotel.”

  After dinner the evening did turn wet and this appeared to dampen the spirits of the party. Most seemed lethargic, Catherine more prim, disdainful, and withdrawn than ever, and Clarissa looking tired and depressed. The party, except for the nuns, who had gone to their rooms to write letters and postcards, gathered in a circle around a table in the lounge and Owen produced playing-cards and suggested bridge, but nobody wanted to play.

  The hotel television set—there were no sets in the bedrooms—had been put out of order by a meddlesome guest and there was no radio set, so there were not even these forms of entertainment to fall back on.

  Conversation soon flagged. Lionel lit cigarettes for himself and Clarissa, and Stewart pushed back his chair and said he thought he would go and put some custom in the barman’s way, but Catherine picked up her formidable pince-nez which were dangling on a long gold chain, put them on and gazed at him severely.

  “I thought you did that before dinner,” she said. “Have you no concern for your liver?”

  “Devil a bit, but I defer to your wishes. What, then, are we all going to do to pass the evening? Does anybody know any good stories?”

  “Not the kind you would favour,” said Catherine.

  (“Is this her way of flirting with him?” thought Laura.)

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, smiling at her. “Like you, I favour great literature and you must admit that one or two of Chaucer’s pilgrims got a bit near the bone, and certain of Sheherazade’s life-saving yarns were pretty warm stuff if you read the unexpurgated version. Then there’s Boccaccio, not to mention a music-hall song of before my time. I believe it was sung by a very fetching young woman impersonating a naval officer, and one line was: And you can guess what tales they’d be ‘twixt a captain and a middy in the King’s Navee.’ I trust I quote correctly.”

  “Stop being idiotic!”

  “Well, it was an idiotic song, unless the relationship between the captain and the midshipman was one which I’m sure the regulations would never permit.”

  “Don’t be obscene!”

  “Dear me! There’s no pleasing you tonight! What may I say, please, Auntie Kate? Shall I quote Petruchio to gain your favour? ‘That—hearing of her
beauty and her wit, her affability and bashful modesty, her wondrous qualities and mild behaviour—’ ”

  Catherine got up.

  “I shall go to my room,” she said. “You are intolerable tonight.”

  (“I wonder if there is something between them?” thought Laura.)

  “No, don’t go,” said Owen. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we play the Truth Game?”

  “Because nobody will tell the truth,” said Lionel.

  “If it involves inventing answers to embarrassing questions, I’m not going to play,” said Capella. She began to walk towards the door and, at this, Catherine sat down again. Stewart got up with the intention of following Capella, but Catherine took firm hold of his sleeve and said,

  “Oh, do stop pursuing that poor girl!”

  Capella paused in the doorway and then came back.

  “All right,” she said defiantly. “Perhaps he is pursuing me, but I’m capable of looking after myself. One is capable of more than that after three years at Oxford with the ratio of the sexes what it is at that abode of learning. Bring on your Truth Game. I expect Dame Beatrice will know whether that’s what it will turn out to be.”

  “I suggest that we write down our answers,” said Owen, “and give them to Dame Beatrice so that she can act as judge, if she will be so good. I am prepared to offer a small prize for the most ingenious reply, whether it is truthful or not, and no answers will be read aloud unless people agree.”

  “It is certainly a version of the game which is new to me,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Before we begin,” said Laura, “may I ask a question? Are we to sign our answers?”

  “Oh, I think not. A single initial will do. We don’t want to give our illustrious judge too much of a lead, although some of us will not be able to help ourselves. People may use any initial of their first or their surname, as it pleases them.”