by Q. Patrick
In one of the small woods we got divided from the main party. We could still hear their voices, but I was in no hurry to catch up. It was not often that I had a chance to be alone with Valerie.
“I’m worried about Toni,” she was saying. “I’m sure he’s not on the hunt. Don’t you think we should go back and look for him?” Her hand on my sleeve was trembling. “Something may have happened.”
I was just about to reassure her, when I heard a faint noise ahead of us. Now there had been noises ahead of us all the evening, but this particular sound was different. It was soft and stealthy as though whatever had made it did not want to be heard.
Instinctively I pulled Valerie toward me.
“What is it?” she whispered.
My torch had become entangled with my tobacco pouch and I had difficulty in extricating it. We listened, and once again came the sound, this time a littler nearer. I found myself wishing stupidly that I had accepted Seymour’s offer of a gun. At last the torch slipped into my fingers.
“Who’s that?” I shouted, sending a circle of light into the darkness.
I had directed the beam with unconscious accuracy. There, pressed against a tree, stood a man. I moved the torch higher, illuminating the face. It was Mark Baines. In the flickering light he looked hardly human. His eyes had the wide, expressionless stare of an animal caught in a trap. He reminded me fantastically of a picture of. the martyred Saint Sebastian I had once seen in some gallery or other.
“Mark!” I exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing here?”
He did not answer, but a puzzled, reproachful look came into his eyes. I could guess how he felt about the hunt. The very idea of an animal in pain made him physically ill. Some blind instinct, I supposed, had moved him to follow the hounds, hoping in his strange way to warn or protect the creatures of the wood. I am no sentimentalist, but at that moment I felt rather ashamed of myself and humanity for having such bad taste in our selection of pleasures. Here we were, several dozen adults, devoting an entire evening to dashing about the countryside in search of an animal to kill. The only factor that might have redeemed us in the eyes of Mark and the Almighty was that coons were hard to find. Nine times out of ten our gala hunt deteriorated into a harmless cross-country hike.
For a few seconds the three of us stood in silence.
“You’d better be clearing off home, Mark,” I said at length.
To my surprise he obeyed immediately, slipping away between the trees as noiselessly as a fox.
And then, as I turned to Valerie, the dogs started to yelp. For anyone with a trace of hunting blood in his veins, this is one of the most exhilarating sounds in the world. My whole body began to tingle in a ridiculous fashion. I completely forgot my scruples of a moment before and, pulling Valerie after me, ran forward, crying:
“Come on. They’ve found the scent.”
We broke out of the wood and dashed toward the glowing spots of light ahead. Around us, the crisp air rang with shouts. I heard Charlie’s voice, and then Roberta’s more than usually throaty. We were all running forward, helterskelter, heedless of brambles, stones and cart-ruts.
In the chase, I had completely lost Valerie.
“Where are we?” Even Gerald, who was notoriously indifferent to the sports of the countryside, was excited. I heard him breathing heavily as I passed him.
“Down at Lych Bottom, not far from Grindle Meadow.”
It was Millie’s voice that answered, and then, out of pure joie de vivre, she let out a loud yodel.
“Come on, Doug, my boy, for the first time in thirty generations, the Alstone hunt has scented a coon. We’re making history!”
She grabbed my hand, and together we sped on across the coarse stubble.
The hounds, which were some distance ahead of the main party, were yelping almost continuously as they made up the hill toward Grindle Meadow. I had no idea of what had become of Valerie and, for the moment, I did not care.
Still holding hands, Millie and I leaped a ditch.
“I may be the mother of five,” she was panting, “but I still can run. How I’d love to see Roberta now. I bet you a hundred to one those breeches have split.”
“What a break for the medical students!” I shouted, pulling her over a stile.
“Break is right!”
Laughing like two kids, we careened after the dogs.
I shall never quite know how we reached Grindle Meadow, but I remember vaulting the last gate, with Millie still valiantly at my side. In front of us we could just make out Grindle Oak—a remarkable tree which was famous not only from the botanical viewpoint but also as the nucleus of a hundred years of village gossip. It loomed dim and sinister against the snow-laden sky. The dogs must have stopped at its foot. They were yowling fit to wake the dead.
“It’s treed!” I cried as we ran on. “Treed in Grindle Oak!”
Except for the leader of the hounds we were the first to arrive. The dogs had been let off their leashes and were leaping wildly against the trunk. Behind us we could hear shouts and the thud of running feet as the rest of the party hurried up. I switched my torch through the foliage, hoping to catch a glimpse of our quarry. My luck was in. For a moment, two round holes of light pricked the darkness. It was as though my flash-lamp were being doubly reflected in some hidden mirror.
“Look, Millie!” I exclaimed. “See its eyes?”
The lights quivered and then flashed away as the coon climbed higher into the tree.
“Poor little devil!” Millie was murmuring. “If only it had the sense to keep its eyes shut we could never see to shoot.”
By this time the whole party had assembled and Seymour was efficiently forming us into a circle, spacing the men with guns at regular intervals round the tree. I noticed that Edgar Tailford-Jones had a gun. He stood at my side, looking like a little tin soldier. Further down the line I could make out the burly figure of Charlie Goschen. He, too, was gripping a rifle.
“All torches on the tree, please.”
At Seymour’s command Grindle Oak suddenly sprang into illumination. We watched it, breathless, and every now and then two answering lights glinted at us through the branches.
Edgar was chuckling. “Just like Roberta’s Queenie,” he whispered, nudging me and winking. He seemed to be getting a great kick out of the comparison.
“Guns ready!” Seymour sounded like a sergeant drilling raw recruits.
There was a rustle, then silence except for the whimpering of the dogs.
“Now, Mr. Goschen, will you please shoot? Fire between the eyes.”
So childish is one at these moments that I felt my heart thumping like a schoolboy’s. From my right came a spurt of light and a loud report.
There was the sound of splintering wood, and a branch started to fall, showering leaves and twigs before it. Then, higher up the tree, the coon’s eyes gleamed out at us.
“Missed him!” I think it was Franklin’s voice I heard, heady with excitement.
“Again, Mr. Goschen, please.”
Once more a shot rang out. The bough landed at the foot of the tree with a thud. Otherwise there was silence.
As we all bent our necks backward, we caught a glimpse of the coon. It was clinging on to an outer branch, staring down at us and looking absurdly like a small animated furcoat.
“Isn’t he cute?” cried Millie. “And to think I came here to kill him!”
As she spoke, Alstone ordered a volley, and about ten guns fired simultaneously. This time there was a faint crackling high up in the tree which swiftly grew in volume. Something was tumbling down.
“Here she comes,” cried Franklin.
The dogs tautened, ready to receive the fierce attack which the animal would inevitably make on them, if it were still alive. A shower of leaves and broken twigs pattered down like rain. Occasionally our torches picked out the body on its slow, erratic descent through the branches.
“Gosh, it’s a big one,” cried Millie.
A
buzz of excitement swept round the circle of watchers, as all torches lowered to the bole of the tree. Then, crashing to the patch of lighted ground, fell a dark form.
“Stand back there,” shouted Seymour. “It’s dangerous.”
The dogs sprang forward, yelping madly. Then, an utterly unexpected thing happened. Their yelping changed into a low whine. They took one sniff at the little mound under the tree and cringed away, their tails between their legs.
We all pressed forward, only to stop dead at the sound of a woman’s shriek—harsh and almost insane.
It was Roberta, and she was screaming:
“Polly Baines!”
For a few seconds I thought her hysterical. I thought that the concentrated nervous strain of the evening had merely found its outlet in her. But as I pushed my way to the front of the crowd, I saw that she was right.
It was not a dead raccoon that lay under the tree—but the corpse of a little girl.
Chapter VII
Everyone lurched forward. ïn the queer light I could see the ghoulish curiosity scrawled across their faces in an ugly mask. The medical students from Rhodes were the worst offenders. Their eagerness was positively indecent.
Like a tiger, old Alstone had sprung across the strip of earth that separated him from the body.
“Gentlemen,” he roared, “stand back! Remember, please, that this will be a matter for the police. Is Dr. Conti here?”
I could feel rather than see the peering faces of the crowd. Valerie’s hand was on my arm, and through the leather of my jacket I could feel her face warm against my shoulder.
“He isn’t here, sir,” I volunteered.
“All right. Dr. Swanson, you step up, please. Gerald, run to the house at once and telephone Bracegirdle. Give him the directions and tell him to come here immediately.”
The boy scampered off like a startled rabbit.
“And Franklin—” the old man was now firing out his orders with military precision—“take our guests home. See they have everything they need. No, thank you. I want no one here but Dr. Swanson. Yes—all of you, please.”
There was something about his tone which made every one obey without question. As I stood by his side in the darkness I could see the outlines of their figures as they moved away from Grindle Oak, instinctively keeping close together as though their very nearness lent them security from some imagined danger. Seymour and I were left alone with this gruesome bundle at our feet. For the first time I noticed that it was snowing quite heavily.
As soon as the others were out of sight, Seymour turned his flashlight on to the remains of Polly Baines. I stared down, fascinated. The child had been wrapped round and round with rope until she looked like a mummy. It was not pleasant to approach too near, but I could see from her face and the torn shreds of her clothing that the buzzards had been at work. I thought of Mrs. Middleton’s prophetic words: “When buzzards roost in Grindle Oak, Death comes to the valley.” There had been reason enough for their roosting.
Seymour Alstone was standing with his back against the tree, gazing out at the swirling snowflakes. It would have been hard to analyze the expression on his face which never changed save when I lit a cigarette and a frown of deep annoyance puckered his brow. Only once did he break his silence, almost half an hour after the excited voices of the guests had faded into the distance.
“They ought to be here by now,” he snapped, shining his flashlight on to his heavy watch. “I wonder what that boy’s been up to.”
It was a strange vigil waiting there with that silent man and the corpse. Any examination of the body was, of course, out of the question. There was nothing I could do—nothing but occasionally to wipe the snow from the little mound at my feet. I lit cigarette after cigarette burning away the minutes until at last I heard Bracegirdle’s familiar voice calling my name.
“Thought I’d never find you,” he said, shaking the snow from his shoulders. “Mr. Goschen’s directions weren’t any too plain over the ’phone.”
I remember being distinctly surprised that Charlie rather than Gerald Alstone had told Bracegirdle of the discovery, but my mind was far too occupied with the present calamity to worry about what, at that time, seemed so trivial an incident.
With the arrival of the police, Seymour had become efficiency itself. He told the whole story of what had occurred, and in the rasping quality of his voice I could detect unspoken censure of Bracegirdle’s failure to have instigated a more thorough search.
After listening to the main facts, the deputy interrupted him a trifle impatiently.
“I suppose you’re prepared to identify the corpse, Dr. Swanson?”
He bent over the body, upon which the coroner, grumbling at the unsatisfactory weather conditions, was conducting a cursory inspection.
“Yes, that’s Polly Baines, all right.”
“And you’re sure it did fall from the tree?”
“No question about it. You could get thirty witnesses to prove that.”
“Hm, yes. There’s the place where the bullet tore through the rope. Nasty business, eh?”
“Have you any opinion as to how long she’s been dead, Dr. Swanson?” asked the coroner.
“No, doctor.”
All this time Bracegirdle was quietly instructing his men. Some shone torches up into the boughs and scoured the ground beneath it. Others, with the aid of a magnesium flare, were attempting a photograph despite the thickly falling snow. I found myself admiring the deputy immensely. There was a certainty about him, a basic common sense, which took all the fairy-tale horror out of the evening’s events. Here we were at midnight in a snowstorm with the mutilated corpse of a child at our feet; yet Bracegirdle simplified it down to a mere matter of daily routine.
“Well, Doctor, there’s nothing much we can do tonight.” I noticed to my amusement that the deputty was utterly ignoring the existence of old Alstone, who stood restlessly at his side. “The news must be broken to the Baines, of course, but the longer that’s put off the better. Someone must get up that tree, too, but it can wait till tomorrow. Darn this snow! It makes it absolutely hopeless to see anything. Let’s call it a day.”
He signalled two of his men, who very carefully lifted the small corpse and carried it over to the waiting cars.
“If Dr. Conti’s around,” remarked the coroner, “I’m sure Dr. Brooks would be glad to have him help with the autopsy.”
“He isn’t here,” I answered, “but if I see him I’ll give him your message.”
The car trundled slowly off over the whitening ground. I watched the lights gradually dwindling into the darkness.
After they were well away, I started off with Seymour for the house. We walked in silence, our coat collars turned up against the driving snow.
Seymour had always been a mystery to me. Now he seemed even more puzzling than ever. I had never swallowed wholesale the local opinion of him as a dyspeptic nouveau riche with a Napoleon-complex. He had, if prejudiced reports spoke true, indulged in the sort of business career which is not recommended by the Sunday-school pamphlets. He was, too, a bit of a tartar. But, nevertheless, there was a dignity in his very relentlessness, a genuine poise in his arrogance. At that particular moment I would have given a great deal to have had the courage to ask him what he knew of this latest affair. I could not help but think that, somehow, however remotely, all these tragedies did have a connection with the erect, grizzle-haired old man at my side. And, of course, there was the incident of the parked car which Toni and I had seen on the night the setter disappeared. There was the problem of Roberta’s angry, broken sentences. What did it all mean? Should I have told Bracegirdle what I had heard? These questions were tumbling about in my mind as together we turned into the Alstone’s drive.
But none of them was fated to be answered just then. At the front porch Seymour bade me a curt goodnight and hurried in alone.
The great house was in darkness except for a few lighted bedrooms. I gathered that the guests must hav
e hurried home pretty quickly. The deserted drive confirmed my speculation.
It was extremely dark down the side path where I had left my car. I stumbled along through the slippery snow, cursing myself for not having switched on the lights before going up to the party.
At last I bumped against a mudguard, and fumbling around the side of the car, slipped my fingers over the door handle.
As I did so, a voice whispered:
“Who is it?”
“Valerie!”
“Oh, it’s you, Doug. How you scared me. I couldn’t hear you coming in the snow.”
I opened the door and squatted down at her side.
“Whatever are you doing here?” I asked.
“Waiting for Toni. This is his car, isn’t it?” Her voice was strained, and I felt she was eager to keep the conversation on banalities. “I never can tell yours from his in the dark. They’re both Plymouths, only yours is red and his is black. Or is it the other way round?”
She had put on a fur coat, and the soft hair brushed my cheek.
“I’m afraid it’s not only our cars you muddle up, Valerie,” I said, laughing. “Sometimes I believe you think of me as just a part of Toni. Addendum—one pleasant, dull room-mate. I’d love to feel I had some sort of individuality to you.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Doug.” Her hand searched for mine and squeezed it. “You have, you know you have. I put you in the category of Major Perquisites:—one bachelor, a little above the average height, attractive grey eyes, sweet smile, nice to mother, reliable …”
“That sounds like a butler advertising for ‘position in lady’s family’.”
“And that, Doug,” she said softly, “sounds rather like a proposal. You never have, you know.”
It was good to be sitting there alone with her, pretending that the horrors of the past few horns had no meaning. In the midst of death, I thought, evolving my first epigram, we are in life. Valerie was young and warm and close to me. And, although for months I had been steadfastly refusing to admit it, I was in love with her. What I might have said in that mood of heightened emotions I shall never know, for she suddenly brought me back to earth and the realities of the moment.
