Jeanie, with most of the others, gathered at the balustrade and looked southwards over the wintry fields. They were glad of the excuse to turn their backs on the drear north.
“Avebury!” echoed Sir Henry. “You’re not going to persuade me that megalithic man could see Avebury from here without field-glasses?”
“No,” said Fone with restraint. “And nor can modern man see it with them. But he can find his way to Avebury without map or guide if he makes his way by his own eyesight from one to another of the ancient landmarks I have mentioned. And I have no doubt that in megalithic times a road ran straight from one to another of them.”
In Cole Harbour Wood, which lay beyond Grim’s Grave, and hid her own Yew Tree Cottage from Jeanie’s view, somebody was once again felling trees. How long ago, how very long ago it seemed since Jeanie, walking peacefully along the road to Cleedons, had heard that sound! The only care in her mind then had been for her smoking parlour fire. She saw two or three felled trees now lying on the cleared ground, the piled-up frith waiting for the fire. Larches, they were, she could see now. She saw a man wielding an axe. She liked the intent, bent look of him, the rhythmical swing, the hard loud sound of impact. Lift, swing—thud! Lift, swing— thud! Queer, how the ear expected the thud before it came! One saw the axe-head sink into the wood, on an under-cutting stroke one actually saw the white chip fly out, before one heard the thud that sent it flying.
Jeanie found Peter Johnson standing near the balustrade beside her. He looked pale and stern, and seemed to have aged in the last two days.
“I hope they’re not going to cut down all those trees, Peter.”
“I don’t suppose so, Jeanie. Just getting a few larch poles for fencing, I expect.”
“Listen!”
“To what?”
“The axe. It’s funny how you don’t hear the thud till after the axe has hit the tree.”
“Not really. Light travels faster than sound, and the wood’s some distance away. I haven’t seen anything of Finister, Jeanie. Have you?”
He spoke jauntily, but when Jeanie looked up at him, she saw that his eyes were haggard. Her heart contracted.
“No, Peter.”
“I wonder what he’s playing at. I wonder all the time. I’m only just managing to hang on here, Jeanie. Sometimes I feel I must run off somewhere—anywhere, and hide. You don’t know what it’s like!”
“Oh!” murmured Jeanie, for he was raising his voice and the strong wind was blowing his words across the roof, and she saw Tamsin Wills look curiously across at them. “I do, Peter. Try to take it easy.”
“But my dear sir,” they heard Sir Henry utter in tones of bland surprise. “Are we to understand, then, that in your view the Watling Streets were not made by the Romans?”
“Re-made, yes. Not laid down. The tracks were already here, and had been in use for centuries.”
Sir Henry shrugged his shoulders very slightly.
“I wish I understood,” murmured Jeanie to Peter, “what Mr. Fone is talking about. Who were the megalithic people?”
‘‘Why, the men who put up the megaliths, Miss Halliday,” replied Hugh Barchard, who was standing near and who, perhaps because he had heard it all before, was not attending very closely to Mr. Fone’s lecture.
“The megaliths?”
“The stone circles. And the barrows. Grim’s Grave.”
William Fone was defying the wind and facing northwards now, while he was pointing out to a somewhat sceptical audience a sighting notch on distant Herry Hill, just visible over the rising land.
“Apart from Herry Hill, there is not much of interest to be seen in that direction,” said Mr. Fone, “although a great many interesting landmarks exist. The rise of the land blocks our view of the interesting circle of barrows on Treinton...”
Once again Jeanie lost the thread of her host’s lecture. Not much of interest to be seen, he said. There was a good deal of interest to be seen. There was a heron flying over Cleedons with its peculiar slow flight. Cows were coming with the slow indifferent motion of their kind down the lane to the milking-shed. A boy in a faded crimson shirt was watching them in. The dairyman in his white coat crossed the chilly stone yard. Across the paddock a cart was rumbling slowly, piled high with bracken, which now looked purplish and cold in tone, lacking the sun’s rays. Was it only nine days since Jeanie had with such pleasure watched this very scene, admired the warm brown of the bracken, the green of the orchard grass, the soft autumnal glow upon the scene? Where now in this chill wind was that soft autumnal glow? Where kindly Robert Molyneux, the owner of that wagon, the master of these men?
She watched the bracken-wagon drawn up inside the barn. She noted how the dried light-coloured mud upon the wheels made a harmony in cool tones with the light corduroy trousers of the wagoner, the grey of the stone buildings, the chill blue of the sky. She watched the bracken unloaded into the barn, watched the wagon rumble off again behind the tall open barn-doors, watched a white hen scratch and peck about in the orchard grass for seeds or insects which might have fallen over the wagon-side. Jeanie was idly glad the hen was white. It gave just the needed point to the picture in cold tones she was painting for herself.
It gave just the right note to the picture in cold tones she was painting for herself. And the tones of the picture were very cold. Unnaturally cold. Fearfully cold. They seemed to grow colder and colder every second. Or was it Jeanie herself who grew colder and colder every second? The axe in Cole Harbour Wood thudded through the background of her thought. She stared across the road.
“What’s worrying you, Miss Halliday? You look as if you’d seen a ghost,” murmured Hugh Barchard jocosely.
“I have,” replied Jeanie. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears. “I’ve seen a white hen.”
She heard her voice as if it were someone else’s. Had she spoken rather loudly? She became aware of eyes looking at her—surprised, curious, observant. Even Mr. Fone had paused in his discourse and was looking at her. Had she said something odd?
She had said something rash. She must be careful what she said. She had better say nothing at all. She had a feeling that she was surrounded by enemies. She looked for Peter, and found him looking at her with a concerned expression. What was the matter with them all? What was the matter with her looks? She saw Dr. Hall looking at her concernedly. She tried to smile at him. She thought she succeeded, but Dr. Hall evidently thought not.
“You’re not well, Miss Halliday!”
“Yes, I am, thank you.”
Did she say that, or only mean to say it? Dr. Hall did not seem to hear her.
“The wind’s too cold for you. You’d better sit down a moment. Here—this stool.”
Obediently, Jeanie sat.
“I’m perfectly all right. I wish you’d all go on with your meeting. Please, Mr. Fone. Please do. I shall be quite all right in half a jiffy.”
She had to submit to Dr. Hall’s adept grab at her wrist. She remembered how Agnes had said that before she fainted in the lane she had felt that she must lie down. Jeanie knew now how she felt. For two pins she would have laid her sick, heavy head against the cushioned waistcoat that appeared on a level with her dimming eyes. Had Dr. Hall not been inside the waistcoat, in fact, she would have done so. Everything went black.
But not for long, because when she opened her eyes Peter was still kneeling beside her and holding her hand, and Dr. Hall was still leaning solicitously over her. She saw them all standing round, and felt both ashamed of herself and oddly frightened. She longed for warmth, a soft chair to lie in, and solitude.
“I’m all right now. Quite, quite all right. I think I’ll go home.”
She refused with vigour Sir Henry Blundell’s offer to drive her home to Yew Tree Cottage.
“No, really, thank you very much. I can walk. It’ll do me good.”
“Certainly I’ll drive you, Miss Halliday,” protested Sir Henry with the crisp determination that characterised him. But Jeanie was e
qually determined that he should not, and for the second time that afternoon Sir Henry was forced to yield. It was Peter who helped her down the ladder and walked along the road with her towards the sanctuary of Yew Tree Cottage, leaving the rest of the Field Club to stamp their cold feet, wipe the moisture from their noses, listen to Mr. Fone and long for the moment of descent.
Peter slipped his hand through Jeanie’s arm.
What’s the matter, Jean? Nothing serious, I hope?” His dark eyes were kind and anxious. Jeanie looked at him gravely. She still felt a little queer, and a heavy headache had settled over her eyes.
“Well, it is rather, Peter. I think I know who murdered Molyneux.”
She felt his hand tighten over her wrist.
“What?”
“I think I know who—”
“Jeanie! But—”
“I think I’ll go home and sleep on it, Peter. I feel in too much of a muddle to talk about it now. It’s rather sudden, you see. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”
“But Jeanie, can’t you just—”
“No, in case I’m wrong. I’ll sleep on it to-night, Peter. I shall be all right. You go back to your megaliths.”
“Not I. I’m seeing you home.”
“I’d really, really rather you didn’t. Mrs. Barchard’s there. I’ll be all right.”
Jeanie had a great longing to be alone. She withdrew her hand from Peter’s, and palely but obstinately smiled at him. He frowned and seemed about to dispute the point. Jeanie was glad when Mrs. Peel, driving her shining black car, overtook them and stopped and insisted on driving her the hundred yards or so on to her cottage.
“I’ve just been up to see our little saint about my darling daughter. I’ve decided to go to South Africa in the spring with Eustace. So if Agnes likes to be saddled with somebody else’s kid, which, between you and me, she doesn’t like at all, but she has to pretend she does—let her, I say! All I insist on is Sally must go to school, and if Agnes is her guardian, which I won’t dispute at present, Agnes must pay the school fees! I’m not going to have that snake of a Miss Wills perverting my child’s mind,” said Myfanwy in maternal and virtuous tones which at any other time might have tickled Jeanie. “So we’ve settled it that Sally starts going to school next term and spends her holidays at Cleedons. Suits me very well, and poor dear Agnes has to pretend it suits her. The only person it won’t suit is dear Miss Wills. Well, here we are.”
“Won’t you come in and have some tea?”
“Can’t, thanks all the same. I’ve got all the packing to do. Eustace is driving down to Somerset this evening on some wild-goose chase after a house he’s thinking of buying, so I’ve got all his packing to do as well as my own. Do tell me, though—” Myfanwy Peel let down the window of her car to converse with Jeanie as she stood at her gate—“do tell me what you were doing on the roof of that loony’s house? I saw you as I went up to Cleedons. What was it? Fire-drill?”
“We were looking for old straight tracks,” said Jeanie, smiling faintly.
“Straight tracks? I say, you look a bit washed out. Are you all right?”
“Quite, only a little cold.”
“Well, I hope you found what you were looking for.”
‘I found something I wasn’t looking for,” said Jeanie.
“Like me when I married Franklin,” replied Mrs. Peel with a laugh. “Still, that’s settled now, for the present. We’ll see, when Sally’s grown up, if she won’t prefer her mother and a bit of fun and real life to the collection of fossilised remains she’ll be living with here!”
She drove off. Jeanie shut the door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
NIGHT FEARS
Those who inhabit timber-framed houses grow used to unexplained noises in the silence of the night, as the ancient buildings, like old rheumatic men, crack noisily at the joints and make their loud comments on every change in the weather. Up in the loft, rafter shifts upon plate with a faint groaning crack that sounds like a furtive footstep on the stairs. Tenon moves in mortice with a loud crack like a pistol-shot. That sudden scurrying is caused by the rats running between the boards and plaster in the hidden avenues between the joists of the ceiling.
As a rule, Jeanie did not even need to remind herself of these things. She scarcely heard the noises of her cottage talking to itself and its inhabitants; or, when she heard it, heard it as one hears the friendly noise of the rain or the wind. This evening, a mere fall of soot down the parlour chimney made her jump up in alarm and upset the milk-jug. She could not bear sudden noises. Sudden noises reminded her of shots, and sudden death. And as she mopped up the milk she saw once again the circle of concerned, curious eyes which had converged upon her on Cole Harbour roof just before she fainted.
There was no milk left in the jug, and she wanted another cup of tea. She picked up the jug and went out with a candle through the hall to the larder. She could hear the tinkle of metal from behind the closed kitchen door as she passed. Mrs. Barchard had not gone yet. Wednesday was her day for cleaning brass, and this labour, which she loved, usually kept her late. As she went along the passage, Jeanie realised that the wind had dropped and that everything outside the house seemed silent, magnifying the noises within, as when a storm is impending. Perhaps the threatened snow was about to fall. But there was some movement in the air, for when Jeanie opened too quickly the larder door, a draught through the wire gauze at the window at once blew her candle out. She gave a little, silly sobbing gasp, as if this were a haunted house instead of her own dear home, and she a nervous lodger instead of its happy owner. She knew where the matches were kept in the larder. She put her candlestick down and shut the door and felt about on the shelf under the window.
The sky had certainly become overcast with the falling of darkness. No stars were visible, but a uniform cold grey which, from the pitch darkness of the larder, seemed faintly luminous. No snow had fallen, yet. The square of light from the kitchen window illuminated dry frost-nipped ground. There was a man standing up against the leafless syringa...
Jeanie’s gasp this time seemed really to lift a disordered heart a little way in her throat. She stood quite still. She could not see the man now. She would not have seen him before had he not moved. But he was there, standing as still as herself beside the old syringa-bush which made a thick patch of darkness.
No he was not there! Jeanie had seen out of the corner of her eye the flight of an owl, imagined a darkness m the shape of a man and connected the two together. She had her hand on the matches now, but could not take her eyes off the syringa-bush. And as she looked a portion of the blackness moved off across the dark grass, and was a man. The kitchen light fell for a second on the toe of a man’s shoe. A black shoe.
Jeanie’s first impulse was to flee to the kitchen. Her next, to curse Mrs. Barchard for not pulling the kitchen blind down, for the patch of light thrown by the kitchen window dazzled her eyes. If it had not been for that, perhaps by now she would have been accustomed to the darkness and have been able to see who it was who was creeping slowly, slowly, in that extraordinary fashion, as though he were doing a balancing feat, along the grass edging at the other side of the path.
The background of dark fruit-bushes and apple-trees obscured all but the movement of a denser darkness. But along a grass verge some fifteen feet from the window, somebody was walking like a man on a tight-rope, putting one foot closely down in front of the other. There was something horrible, it seemed to Jeanie, in the clumsy grotesqueness of the movement. Her foolish heart, as if it were a caged creature that had had enough teasing for to-day, throbbed irritably. The figure disappeared behind an espalier. Softly and suddenly opening the iron-framed casement, Jeanie called:
“Who’s there?”
There was no reply, no movement in the darkness. An ice-cold air came in upon Jeanie’s hot face. Everything was silent. How foolish that her heart should race so, that all her instincts should silently call for help! Were there no silly boys in the
cottages round about? Was not a garden gate open to everybody who chose to trespass? Had not Jeanie before now found on her flower-beds the clumsy footprints of people taking a short cut through her garden from some farm-house below in the valley? What harm could a trespasser in her garden do to her safely behind the barred doors of her cottage?
Who’s there? indeed, in that foolish, quavering voice! The trespasser was laughing to himself, no doubt, among the apple-trees. But perhaps he was not laughing. Perhaps now, at this moment in that darkness, a rifle or a pistol was pointing at Jeanie’s open window, perhaps at this moment a steady determined finger was on the trigger.
Crash! went the casement as Jeanie’s hand flung it to. There was a further tinkle, as a little diamond-shaped pane fell out.
“Oh damn!” muttered Jeanie, fastening the catch and fumbling for the matches, crouching, keeping her head down away from the window. She did not light her candle till she was outside the larder again and the door shut. Inside the kitchen, Mrs. Barchard was still singing softly and hoarsely to herself. Jeanie had half a mind to open the kitchen door and reassure herself with the sight of Mrs. Barchard and the steaming kettle and the rows of metal candlesticks and the glowing kitchener. But she was afraid of Mrs. Barchard. She was afraid of everybody. She was afraid of everything.
As she entered the parlour she realised that she had forgotten to bring the milk she had gone to fetch. She could not go back again.
“Mrs. Barchard! Mrs. Barchard!”
That was a foolish urgent voice in which to call a domestic. Mrs. Barchard would think the chimney was on fire or something. But at any rate it brought her quickly to the parlour, still holding a polishing leather in her well-whitened hand.
“Yes, Miss?”
“Oh, Mrs. Barchard! Could you fetch me some more milk? I’ve just spilt all this.”
“Oh dear! Yes, of course.” Polishing the damp tray with the corner of her apron, Mrs. Barchard added, for she was nothing if not inquisitive: “I thought I heard you, Miss, going to the larder just now?”
Let Him Lie Page 19
