The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Bizarre is the right word,” said Laura. “What do you make of it all?”

  “A very remarkable story and a very unusual set of suspects,” Gavin replied. “Flitting ghosts and stone circles, a nun with extra-sensory powers, a girl who starts off with poltergeists—how did you come to hear about that, by the way?”

  “Oh, in general chat with Capella after we saw the body at Callanish. She repeated what she had told us previously about bodies in rectangles and then mentioned poltergeists and said she had told Stewart about her experiences. Dame B. thinks the same person committed both murders.”

  “Well,” said Gavin, “it does sound as though the interval between the two deaths was too short for this to be a copycat murder, especially as the Lewis story took days to seep down south. What rather interests me is what caused you to visit the Rollright Stones at all. When you wrote you gave me an outline of your itinerary. I looked it up before I came. The last item on it was the trip to Lewis and Harris. There was no mention of the Rollrights, was there?”

  “No. We had this girl, Capella, with us who had been taken to see them when she was twelve and she wanted to see them again. It wasn’t far off our route, as we were going to drop her in north Oxford, anyway, so we went along, and there, of course, in one of the fenced enclosures, was that horrible sack.”

  “Ah, yes. Did the girl seem upset or perturbed in any way when you spotted the sack?”

  “I believe she spotted it before we did, as a matter of fact. No, sorry! I’m wrong about that. I was the one who pointed it out, and it was Dame B. who referred it to the custodian. Capella didn’t even seem particularly interested in it, so far as I remember. In any case, she couldn’t possibly have been responsible for its being there. She was with us all the time after we left Inverness.”

  “How long did the two men, Owen and Stewart, stay there?”

  “I have no idea. We made a very leisurely journey southward, so anybody who wanted to push on down to the Rollrights could easily have outdistanced us, I should think. Against that, Stewart didn’t have a car, although Owen did, but I can’t see them in collusion over a murder.”

  “What did you make of Stewart?”

  “He was a bit contradictory. You know—very much the dilettante to begin with, flippant, making mock-love to Capella, irritating Catherine, and all that sort of young-man stuff—but deadly serious about stone cricles and chambered cairns and cist graves and cup and ring marks, as we soon discovered.”

  “Schizophrenic, do you think?” Gavin said, turning to Dame Beatrice. “Anything that you noticed professionally?”

  “Gracious, no!” she replied. “He seemed a perfectly natural and rather pleasant young man. It is interesting that you should ask that, though. It came to my ears that more than one in our little company suspected that I had been invited to join the party for a reason not unconnected with my professional life, as you suggest.”

  “Oh, really? And were they right?”

  “Not that I am aware. There was no hint of anything of the kind when I received a very cordial invitation from Professor Owen for Laura and myself to join his expedition.”

  “That doesn’t say much. Put the ferret down the rabbit-hole and nature does the rest,” said Laura. Her husband laughed.

  “I expect Dame B. has been called all sorts of things in her time,” he said, “but I doubt whether she has often been personified as a ferret.”

  “You know what I meant. People always think psychiatrists go about like Sir Roderick Glossop, and classify people automatically as potentially dangerous, all right unless the moon is full, frustrated, manic-depressive—you name it and they think Dame B. has stuck it in somebody’s pigeon-hole. Impossible to persuade them that she hasn’t a sort of computerised card-index system registering all her acquaintances and their mental peculiarities.”

  “Sounds a bit like an author I knew. People he met always assumed that he was summing them up in order to put them in a book. Well, how long did it take you to get to the Rollrights from Stornoway? You said it was a leisurely journey.”

  When Laura told him, Gavin summed it up by pointing out that anybody who had been in Owen’s party except, he supposed, Dame Beatrice, Laura, Capella, and Catherine herself would have had plenty of time to commit the murder, cover his tracks, and be off on his lawful occasions before anybody had had the sense to report a bulging sack where, presumably, no bulging sack should have been. Laura said tartly that they had already worked that out.

  “Did you have the slightest suspicion of what might be inside the sack?” Gavin asked Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh yes,” she replied coolly, “of course I had. There are certain humps, bumps, and other outlines which are unmistakable when one has seen as many dead bodies as I have. I hoped I was wrong, but I did not think there was any doubt, so I reported at once to the woman in charge. I did not, of course, tell her of my suspicions.”

  “You did not think of this Catherine Owen?”

  “No, I did not think of Catherine, or, indeed, of any of our party.”

  “You had seen a corpse in another stone circle. Was there no connection in your mind?”

  “The body we saw at Callanish was not that of a member of our party.”

  “I’ll tell you whose body it might have been, though,” said Laura. “I’m only saying this out of the blue, because it’s only just this minute occurred to me.”

  “Ah,” said Dame Beatrice, “but it is only the wildest surmise on your part and I am sure you are mistaken. No such person existed in reality, no matter what Capella may think.”

  “You know what I’m thinking, then?”

  “If your thoughts march with mine, they concern themselves with the mysterious figure which was said to flit from stone to stone during the early part of the tour. I am certain that there was no such figure, or perhaps I should say, no figure of flesh and blood, though I do not doubt that Sister Veronica saw something unusual and that she communicated her vision to the impressionable and suggestible Capella.”

  “What do you propose to do next?” asked Gavin.

  “Visit the nuns, who will be back by now, and find out what happened in Inverness after we left,” said Dame Beatrice.

  CHAPTER 15

  A CONVENT CONCLAVE

  “Each be other’s comfort kind;

  Deep, deeper than divined,

  Divine charity, dear charity,

  Fast you ever, fast bind.”

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  “We’ve done a considerable amount of checking, Dame Beatrice,” said Marsh, a day or two after Gavin had returned to London. “Much obliged for the list of hotels Mrs. Gavin gave us over the phone.”

  “Oh, you checked our homeward journey as well as that of the Smith couple and Miss Owen, did you, Inspector?”

  “In fairness to you and to ourselves, we did, ma’am. Just routine, of course, but we like to see our way clear.”

  “And do you?”

  “So far as yourself, Mrs. Gavin, and Miss Starr are concerned, we are fully satisfied, as, of course, we expected to be. All three signatures are in the hotel registers and as we have been in touch with Miss Starr we were able to give a description of all three of you with satisfactory results. Unfortunately we have not been quite so lucky in the case of the other three. We tried all the hotels in Carlisle, but Smith is such a common name and the young couple themselves are not remarkable in any way, so we got nothing conclusive.”

  “Did the couple not give the name of their hotel?”

  “They were vague. Told us it wasn’t far from the Cathedral, but they had forgotten its name.”

  “I may be able to help you if you feel inclined to try again.”

  “It would clear up the point, but it isn’t all that important. It’s what they did between leaving Carlisle and returning to their home which really concerns us. But what have you to suggest, ma’am?”

  “That you repeat your enquiries, but, this time, ask about a M
r. and Mrs. Smith who booked separate bedrooms.”

  Marsh looked at her enquiringly.

  “Sounds a funny thing for a young married couple to do,” he said. “Does one of them snore?”

  “I have no information on the point. However, Inspector, there is another point. If Miss Owen was with them, her entry in the hotel register would have preceded or immediately followed theirs.”

  “We thought of that, Dame Beatrice, and that’s the most unsatisfactory thing of all. None of the hotels we contacted has the signature of a Miss Owen with an address in London either in front of, or after, the names of a Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I think we must press the couple pretty hard.”

  “Can they have forgotten the name of the town as well as the name of the hotel?”

  “It looks to us as though they’re trying to cover their tracks, ma’am, and that, taken together with the fact that the murdered woman at Little Rollright is known to have been in their company when they left Ardrossan doesn’t look too good for them, does it?”

  “I do not think the Rollright case will be solved, Inspector, until somebody identifies the dead woman at Callanish.”

  “I’m sure the Scottish lads are doing everything they can about that, Dame Beatrice. There are points in common in the two murders, and we can’t overlook the similarities between them. There is the setting of stone circles, the fact that both women were murdered in exactly the same way, and the other fact that the same three people discovered the bodies. It’s a good thing we know all about you and Mrs. Gavin.” He smiled as he said this. Dame Beatrice cackled.

  “And a good thing both of us can go bail for Miss Starr’s innocence,” she said. Marsh nodded.

  “You’ve said it, ma’am,” he responded. “We have interviewed the young lady, who seems rather subject to hallucinations, I would think.”

  “Oh, no. She sufferes from being extremely suggestible, from having a father who has always earned his living by writing articles based on the supernatural and from having read not only all his own works, but the books from which he derived his subject-mattter. She has a vivid imagination and a retentive mind, that is all.”

  “We’ll take your word for it, of course, Dame Beatrice. All the same, it’s a bit of luck for her that she’s got your backing. She told us she had seen in Cumbria what she is sure was the Callanish woman, but whether it was a ghost or a real person who was dodging about, she doesn’t seem at all sure.”

  “I don’t believe she saw anything, Inspector, until Sister Veronica, who undoubtedly is what the layman calls ‘psychic,’ but which I prefer to call gifted (or cursed) with extra-sensory perception, mentioned the wraith to some of us.”

  “Miss Starr recounted to us a dream she had had.”

  “Oh, yes, about the Callanish setting. If you examined her father’s library you would find every item of that dream recorded in one or other of the books he studied. I have no doubt that a precocious and clever little girl had looked at them all at some time or other, with or without her father’s permission. He makes a very satisfactory living out of the material he studies, and I have no doubt that he himself is immune from superstition, but, to an imaginative child, reading became a source of dreams and fantasies which, even at her present age and stage, she has not outgrown. Have you spoken to the two nuns who were members of our party?”

  “No, ma’am. I draw the line at convents unless I’m really up a gum tree. In any case, I don’t see how either lady can help us. Neither of them has ever been over to Lewis or had any connection with the Rollright Stones, since these were not on your tour programme. If you think the ladies could be of any assistance to us, Dame Beatrice . . .”

  “I was going to look them up, in any case, although I agree with you that there is little hope that they can assist the enquiry. What about Mr. Stewart?”

  “I got his address when I interviewed Professor Owen, but it seems that the young gentlemen has gone cavorting off to Ireland to look at stone circles there.”

  “Yes, he is writing a thesis. I will give you an account of my visit to the convent if anything useful comes of my going there.”

  The mother house of the Order of St. Endellion was in Cornwall, and the Exeter convent of which Sister Pascal was prioress was a small one. Apart from the prioress and Sister Veronica, there were only four other nuns in residence, and the convent itself, which stood in its own pleasant grounds outside the city, had been a private house before the Order took it over. The nuns had changed the drawing-room into a chapel, the morning-room into the convent parlour to which seculars could be admitted, the dining-room into the Community room which normally was taboo to the laity, and the large kitchen into a refectory, a convenient arrangement since all the cooking could be done in the adjacent scullery which was sizable, well-lighted, and well-equipped.

  It was recreation time when Dame Beatrice and Laura arrived, and as a mark of favour which, having been called in to investigate happenings in two other convents, Dame Beatrice was quick to appreciate, Sister Pascal took them into the Community room instead of the more formal parlour.

  The Community themselves, who had been chatting, sewing, or reading, stood up when the visitors came in and prepared to vacate the room, but Sister Pascal, having introduced Dame Beatrice and Laura, invited the others to remain.

  “This is your room,” she said. “If Dame Beatrice has anything to say which is meant for my ears alone, we shall go into the parlour.” She had introduced the nuns as Sister Benedict, Sister Jude, Sister Edward Martyr, Sister Lucia, and Sister Veronica, “whom, of course, you know. Will you have this chair, Dame Beatrice? This one, Mrs. Gavin? Please sit down, everybody.”

  Sister Veronica had kissed Dame Beatrice on both cheeks, the convent “kiss of peace,” but apparently sensing Laura’s astonishment and translating it into disapproval, the young nun merely shook her by the hand.

  When all were seated, Sister Pascal said, “We are deeply shocked by the news of Miss Owen’s death. You must have been even more so, and as for Miss Babbacombe-Starr!”

  “Yes. She was deeply shocked by both deaths. It was very unfortunate for her that she was present when both bodies were found.”

  “You said on the telephone that Sister Veronica and I might be able to help you. I cannot quite see how. We have never been nearer to the Rollright Stones than Oxford, and we have never been on the island of Lewis, where you saw the body of this so far unknown woman.”

  “I have a theory—but it is only a theory—that one of our party knew her,” said Dame Beatrice. Light dawned on Sister Veronica. Her beautiful grey eyes widened. Her mouth, “mighty like a rose,” as Stewart had been known to quote on one occasion (although the compliment was not paid in her presence or passed on to her), rounded into an astonished “O” before she accepted the statement and said simply, “Our extra member!”

  “You make it sound like an extra arm or leg,” said the rotund Sister Benedict, “and only Caliban, according to Stephano, was so equipped. Indeed, he was credited with four legs, twice the usual number.”

  Apparently Benedict filled the role of licensed jester to the Community, for all that Pascal said to Veronica was: “How do you mean, Sister?—what extra member?”

  “I believe I incurred your displeasure when I mentioned, while we were inspecting the stone circles, that our party sometimes numbered ten when Mr. Stewart was not with us, and eleven when he was,” said Sister Veronica.

  “I remember your saying so, but nobody else, except Miss Starr, claimed to have seen an extra person.”

  “I suppose most people took no notice because they thought it was just another visitor, like yourselves,” said Sister Lucia.

  “I would have thought the same,” said Sister Veronica, “except”—she smiled with exquisite sweetness—“one is always inclined to suspect the child who tries to keep herself out of the picture, and this apparition I saw was furtive in the extreme and made a most unpleasant impression on me. He generated an atmosphere of evil.�
��

  “He?” interpolated Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh, yes. I was unsure at first, because so many women on holiday wear trousers, but on thinking things over, I am sure it was a very shadowy man.”

  “So we will leave it at that,” said Sister Pascal with authority. She was overridden by Dame Beatrice, who appeared unaware that the subject was supposed to be closed.

  “Can you remember when was the last time you saw this person?” she asked.

  Sister Veronica looked at her prioress, received a nod and replied, “We certainly saw nobody of the kind on Arran, so the last time would have been at Castlerigg, I think.”

  “And after Castlerigg our whole party was never together,” said Laura. “I wonder whether that had anything to do with it?”

  “Perhaps,” said Dame Beatrice, looking at Sister Pascal, “either you or Sister Veronica would give me an account of how you spent the time in Inverness.”

  “I doubt whether they spent it murdering anybody,” said Sister Benedict.

  “And, if they had, we could hardly expect them to say so,” said Dame Beatrice, leering benevolently at the humorist. Sister Pascal looked at Sister Veronica, who blushed and said that she hoped for correction if her memory proved unreliable. They had gone to visit the Clava site. She went on to give a description of it. She and Sister Pascal had left the Inverness convent at eleven in the morning and had taken the Nairn road. They had stopped at the battlefield of Culloden and after that they had branched off on to the road to Grantown-on-Spey, but soon left it for a narrow road from Balloch which crossed the River Nairn and brought them within reach of the three Clava cairns.

  These were the most interesting objects of the tour. They were probably of Neolithic origin and were erected, she had read, before the Bronze Age stone circle which surrounded them. They were aligned on the setting of the mid-winter sun and it was possible to see a great deal of them because there were entrance passages between walls of stone, some of which bore cup-markings.

  The cairns themselves were also shored up by large uprights of stone and the whole site bore suggestions of magical practices. The cup-marks offered these, and the thought of crouching, superstitious Neolithic men watching for the setting of the mid-winter sun from a passage which led into the tombs of their ancestors was almost frightening and very fascinating and thrilling, Veronica concluded.