The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “At any rate, she could not have committed the murder.”

  “But you think she may know who did?”

  “She may guess. She related the body to that woman she is supposed to have been. Let us make a dignified departure and continue the conversation later.”

  They were soon out of the town and heading south for Tarbert on Harris and the ferry to Uig. The crossing this time was enjoyable. Out from Tarbert there were islands large and small, some mere rocks. The chain ended with Scalpay, guarded on the west side by its own group of tiny islands and bounded to the north by a long stretch of the coast of Harris. The landscape was crowned by the thousand-foot peak of Uiseval, which the travellers had seen from the road as they came through.

  Capella joined Laura at the rail of the ship.

  “Lovely, isn’t it?” she said.

  “And a shorter sea-trip than the outward one,” said Laura. “I wonder,” she added, struck by a sudden thought, “what the rest of our lot got up to in Inverness?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, that sudden change of plan was a bit strange. In the letter of invitation which came for Dame B. and myself, Owen specifically mentioned Callanish and Arran as the star attractions, yet he himself and five others settled for Kilmartin instead of Arran, and now only the three of us opted for Callanish. Three others opted out altogether and have gone home, and Stewart, Owen, and the nuns have settled for Clava.”

  “What of it? People can change their minds.”

  “Not when a murdered body is found at a place to which seven out of ten of the party have decided not to go. A bit fishy, that, and in my experience (as the boy of eleven said at a children’s Brains Trust when some funny idiot in the audience asked a question about divorce), in my experience, things which are fishy are apt to smell very nasty after a period of time.”

  “You are not suggesting that one of our party murdered that woman, are you?”

  “No, of course not, but you did say you recognised the body as that of somebody you had spotted trailing our lot around the stone circles.”

  “But we left her behind in Cumbria. Nobody saw her on Arran or at Kilmartin.”

  “And why not? I’ll tell you. You and Sister V. are the only ones who claim to have seen her. She didn’t appear to either of you on Arran, although those circles at noonday on Machrie Moor were spooky enough to encourage any ghostly visitant. Did you know that the most terrifying ghosts are not those seen by night? The really dreadful ones seem to be like mad dogs and Englishmen; they go out in the noonday sun.”

  “Are you trying to frighten me, Laura?”

  “No, of course not. Just pulling your leg.”

  “So what have Arran and Kilmartin to do with it?”

  “Plenty. If your flitting figure didn’t turn up on Machrie Moor it isn’t you who is being haunted, neither is it Sister Veronica.”

  “Nobody saw it at Kilmartin, either, but perhaps nobody there was capable of seeing ghosts. Laura, on a different matter, what do you think is the matter with Stewart? He was—well, you know—”

  “All over you to begin with, and then he went to Kilmartin instead of Arran and stayed in Inverness instead of coming with you to Stornoway? Yes, I know.”

  “It makes me feel rather a fool.”

  “Oh, nonsense! These blow-hot, blow-cold merchants have to be taken as you find them. I certainly wouldn’t lose any sleep over that one if I were you.”

  “Clarissa told me he was with Catherine all the time at Kilmartin.”

  “So why should you worry?”

  “She’s very beautiful, Laura.”

  “And the coldest fish that ever leaped out of the sea.”

  “I’ve never had a lover.”

  “Lucky you!”

  “Men at the university, but never anybody special.”

  “You’ve plenty of time. As for Stewart, forget him.”

  “You think he is just a playboy, don’t you?”

  “Good gracious, no. I think he’s got a single-track mind and the track it’s on at present is this thesis of his. When he needed somebody to listen to his theories he chose you, but my guess is that you may have proved too knowledgeable to suit him. He wanted a pupil, a disciple, not a fellow-student and an equal. I expect he had a most satisfying time at Kilmartin instructing the ignorant.”

  “Would you call Catherine ignorant?”

  “On the subject of stone circles, yes. She’s a careers mistress at her school and an amateur novelist in her spare time. The really important things in life would pass her by.”

  “I wonder why she came on the tour?”

  “Why did any of us come?”

  “I’ve always been interested in stone circles ever since my father took us to look at them when I was a child.”

  “And what do you think you are now? Just out of the egg or still emerging?”

  “You’re a great comfort to me, Laura. Are you happily married?”

  “Yes, thanks, very, but I should have been happy anyway, being constructed along those lines. I regard marriage as something to be taken in one’s stride. It’s like passing exams. Either you do or you don’t, and those who don’t often make a great deal more money than those who do.”

  “Would you call Stewart a mercenary man?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Clarissa told me she thinks Catherine has money.”

  “Against that, Catherine is years older than Stewart. She must be well turned thirty.”

  “You really are a great comfort, Laura. It’s the mother in you, I suppose.”

  Laura laughed. They leaned on the ship’s rail, elbow to elbow, and watched the solid flow of the water as it rushed past the ship’s side below them.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE ROLLRIGHT STONES

  “Nor hast thou undergone the rites

  That fit thee to partake the mystery.”

  Robert Southey

  The trip homeward was leisurely. No further reference was made to the body at Callanish, although no doubt it was at the back of all three minds. The party spent three nights on Skye, after driving from Uig to Kyleakin. There they put up at a hotel and made excursions to Dunvegan, Flora MacDonald’s grave, the Cuillins, and the beautiful seascapes of Isleornsay, and Capella saw her first golden eagle.

  They left Skye for Fort William, then spent a night at the hotel at Renfrew Airport and another in Chester and then were well on their homeward way. When they were by-passing Worcester before diverging from the motorway on to the road for Pershore and Burford, Capella said, “Would it take you too far out of your way if we went to Chipping Norton to look at the Rollright Stones? I’d love to see them again.”

  “Nothing easier,” said Laura. “We’re dropping you in north Oxford, anyway, and Dame B. and I are going to stay the night in Oxford. You said ‘again.’ Have you seen them before?”

  “Yes, when I was twelve. I made a foolish, childish promise which I think I ought to retract, and I can only do it in the presence of the King Stone and the Whispering Knights.”

  “Young Fernanda Grey had to do it in the Confessional,” said Laura. “Yours sounds far more romantic. I made a promise myself once.”

  “What did Fernanda Grey promise?”

  “Oh, long before she had reached the age of puberty she vowed herself to perpetual virginity. Later on, she decided she’d been a bit premature.”

  “And what was your promise?”

  “To abstain from all intoxicating liquors as beverages,” said Laura.

  “What a tactful way of putting it!” said Dame Beatrice. “Talking of literary allusions, as Laura’s reference to Frost in May seems to indicate that we are doing, I am reminded of Jenny Diver, who never drank what she termed ‘strong waters’ unless she had the colic.”

  “To which Macheath responded that she did but follow the example of what he called ‘the fine ladies,’ ” said Laura; “and I quote: ‘Why, a lady of quality is never without
the colic.’ Anyway,” she added, “I sat next to an eminent doctor once at a public dinner, and he told me that there is only one real tonic in the world, and that is whisky.”

  After Pershore they branched off at Moreton-in-the-Marsh for Chipping Norton. There was little traffic about, in spite of its being the holiday season, and when they got to Little Rollright and went on to the well-signposted Stones, they found that they had the site to themselves. There were two large lay-bys for cars, and the site, which was on private property, was fenced around by a palisade of wood reinforced by barbed wire. There was a hedge, too, between the visitors and the stone circle, but an entrance had been provided and from this the visitors were able to get an impression of an almost complete ring of stones, some of them so close together that they seemed to be touching one another. Some were tall and were silhouetted against the upland sky; others were almost hidden in the grass.

  On one side of the enclosure there was a copse of deciduous trees amongst which the custodian’s hut of brick and wood was discreetly camouflaged; on the other side was a straggle of conifers. A small wooden table near the entrance supported a plastic bag which held leaflets giving information about the site, and beside the bag was a pickle-jar to hold the modest entrance fees paid by the visitors and the money obtained from the sale of postcards.

  A woman came out of the hut bringing the postcards for display. She greeted the visitors, took their money and laid out the picture postcards. One of these was an excellent colour photograph of the greater part of the circle of stones flanked by the ragged fir-trees; on the cover of the leaflet was a reproduction of an engraving made in 1607 from Camden’s Britannia. Another card showed a shepherd with dog, crook, and basket, seated on a low bank with the Whispering Knights leaning together in the background; a third card, copied from a drawing made in about 1870, strangely showed the conifers forming their own incongruous circle inside the circle of stones.

  An unexpected addition to the Britannia engraving was a windmill. Equally unexpected, and more endearing, was the presence in real life of two white goats which were peacefully grazing in the middle of the stone circle, oblivious of the presence of the three visitors who had now entered the enclosure.

  Capella looked at the weather-beaten stones with a kind of horror. She had not remembered from her previous visit how unkindly the elements had dealt with them. Their surfaces were pitted and pock-marked and there was not much doubt that many of the smaller stones had not formed part of the original circle, but were chunks which had fallen from larger stones. Capella, standing in front of a tall, particularly scabrous-looking pillar of oolitic limestone, said, with dramatic emphasis, “They look like lepers!”

  Laura went back to the custodian, bought another set of cards which she thought her son would like, and pointed to where, some distance off, she could see another group of stones.

  “How do we get to those?” she asked.

  “The Whispering Knights? Well, there is no direct access from here because of the fencing. You will have to go back to the road, turn right and a little way further up there is a path alongside a barley field. The King Stone is on the other side of the road. The owner had to fence in the monuments because insensitive people used to chip pieces off the stones and keep them for luck. It wasn’t deliberate vandalism, but, of course, it had to be stopped, so you’ll find that the King and the Knights have iron railings round them.”

  “Luck?” said Capella, who had joined Laura. “I should think it would be more likely to bring a curse. Don’t people realise that these circles were temples? You might as well chip bits off a cathedral.”

  “I daresay that has been done before now,” said Laura. They returned to Dame Beatrice, who was in contemplation of a solitary, massive, squat-looking stone which was not only apart from any other, for some of the stones formed clumps, but gave an impression of malformed, human malignancy.

  “It is not difficult to believe that this is a man turned to stone, as legend suggests,” she said.

  “The circle is supposed to represent the king’s men,” said Capella. “This one clearly shows how the story came to be told. You can see the shape of a head inclined towards the right shoulder. He has long hair and you can make out both his arms. He looks as though he has fallen asleep on duty.” She stepped forward and touched the rough surface.

  “You’re too fanciful by half,” said Laura. “I like the way he stands out, though, against those bushes and trees.” She took one of the postcards she had bought and made a quick sketch on the back of it before she continued her circuit.

  “I had forgotten how to get to the Knights,” said Capella. “In fact, I’d forgotten most things about this place.”

  They found the King Stone first. It was on the left-hand side of the road and they had to cross a stile which was plainly labelled Private Property. The misshapen monolithic outlier behind its protective barrier of iron, spike-topped railings, stood on pasture-land. The day was fine and the sky blue, but there was cumulus cloud behind the rise on which the stone had been erected, and, against it, the King, grimly aggressive, seemed to be rearing his massive form in defiance of the treachery he suspected.

  Capella went up to the railings, held on to them with both hands, and, in a low voice which barely reached the other two, she solemnly took back her oath. Nobody else said anything. All three returned to the road and only Laura turned at the stile to look back at the solitary stone.

  “I wonder what was the point of these outliers,” she said. “Most of the circles seem to have one. Pointers of some sort, I suppose. There was Long Meg . . .”

  “What there wasn’t here, any more than at Callanish,” said Capella, “was anybody dodging about behind the stones.”

  “Many of them were not tall enough to act as a screen,” said Dame Beatrice, “but I am glad that your spectre has been laid.”

  “You didn’t see it until Sister Veronica mentioned it, did you?” said Laura, pressing a point she had made before.

  “Perhaps not, but I did see it and I did know there would be a body in a rectangular enclosure, didn’t I?”

  They took the narrow path alongside a big field of barley and Laura, who felt that perhaps she should not have spoken so bluntly, changed the subject by remarking that she supposed barley had been grown on the field for generations and that would account for the windmill in the engraving.

  “The two charming but unresponsive goats we saw grazing inside the stone circle might account for the shepherd at a time when the goats would have been replaced by sheep,” said Dame Beatrice. “The Whispering Knights,” she said, as they came near to the iron railings which enclosed the five large stones, “do indeed appear to be in a conspiratorial huddle.”

  Three of the Knights were still standing. The other two had fallen. The group was a formation of later date than the King Stone and the stone circle. It was a Bronze Age burial chamber, but it was rendered less impressive than it might have been, owing to the presence of a large, bulging sack which had been placed conspicuously on a space of rough grass, so that it lay between the upright and the fallen stones and, like them, was inside the iron railings.

  “Wonder what that’s doing there?” said Laura. “Could it be a sack of barley put there as a pagan offering, do you think? Old superstitions die hard.”

  “Barley wouldn’t bulge in various places like that,” said Capella. “It’s probably some witchcraft thing. My father says that modern witches use some of the stone circles for their rites and it’s known that the local people still visit the circles secretly because there’s a superstition that the stones mustn’t be neglected. There is still some sort of pagan cult connected with them.”

  “I wonder whether the custodian knows that the sack is there,” said Dame Beatrice. “The stone circle and her hut are some distance off, so I doubt whether she pays many visits to the Knights.”

  “I expect the sack is full of rubbish some vandals have chucked over the railings,” said Laura, “an
d it does spoil the effect. I certainly think we ought to report it at the hut on our way back.”

  Dame Beatrice said nothing, but she went nearer the railings. The three tall standing-stones, leaning towards one another as though in conclave, traitorous or otherwise, stood out sharply against the distant blue of hills, and the sack certainly did not enhance their static dignity. Laura took out the postcard which showed the engraving of the Knights and behind the seated shepherd in the picture she lightly pencilled in the outline of the sack.

  They retraced their steps, skirting the barley field again and then followed the road.

  “I noticed that you can see the circle from the King Stone,” said Capella.

  “Well, he would want to keep an eye on his men, I suppose,” said Laura flippantly.

  At the hut they had to wait for a minute or two while another party of sightseers was admitted. Dame Beatrice waited while the custodian took the money and displayed the postcards and then said, “There is a large sack in the enclosure of the Whispering Knights. I don’t know whether it is supposed to be there, but we thought we ought to mention it in case you don’t know about it.”

  “A sack? Oh, I’ll tell them up at the house. I have no idea whether it ought to be there, but I shouldn’t think so. I’m only a stand-in, you see, while the other one is on holiday, and I should not bother to go over to the Knights unless I thought people were behaving badly, but, so far, I’ve had no trouble at all. I believe, though, that there has been some bother about litter thrown over into the fields by passing motorists, so thank you for mentioning the sack. I’ll let the owner know.”

  When they had returned to the lay-by and the car and were on the way to Woodstock and Oxford, Laura said, “Why we were all so worried about that sack I can’t imagine. It was nothing to do with us.”

  “It was an incongruity and the incongruous is always interesting and puzzling,” said Dame Beatrice. “I hardly think the owner of the property put the sack there.”

  “Well, I hope it isn’t a case of the body in the bag, ta-rah-rah!” said Laura.