Miss Frayle had considered the ruin an isolated monument; she had not given a thought to the likelihood of it having a burial ground, which the trees and wild vegetation had concealed. Somewhat overcome by the eeriness of the place she hung back.
The wind moaned through the trees, and showers of rain scattered down from their branches and spattered her. Now she could make out a host of moss-sprinkled tombstones all round her, it was as if, she thought fearfully, they had suddenly risen up out of the weed-infested tangle against her intrusion. She was reminded of a very similar occasion one evening last summer when she had accompanied Dr. Morelle down to an old church on the river.
She’d found herself in the darkness stumbling over old graves in pursuit of Dr. Morelle who had been bent only upon finding the particular grave-stone he had come in search of. She hadn’t enjoyed that macabre experience very much. This was almost as unnerving; though it wasn’t night. The atmosphere of the dark, thunderous early evening was decidedly sinister.
Another peal of thunder rolled far off across the marshes, and she knew she must get out from under the trees. She looked to where Erica, who had grabbed both her own suitcases to lighten Miss Frayle’s load, had pushed on to the old stone porch and was beckoning her.
“Come on, what’s holding you up?”
“I fell over somebody’s grave,” Miss Frayle said, apologetically and scrambling breathlessly to the other’s side.
“Place is full of old graves,” Erica said, “but no one’s been buried here for donkey’s years.”
Miss Frayle found herself marvelling at Erica’s cool indifference to her surroundings, she was staring through the trees to the sky above the marsh. “I don’t think we’re going to get this lot,” she said confidently. “It’s rolling away over Burnham. We’ve only got the tail-end.”
“Hope so,” Miss Frayle said. “The sooner we’re out of this creepy place the better.” She threw a look at the old porch and a broken ivy-covered wall. Some of the lattices still gaped in the crumbling walls, one of which ended in all that remained of the vestry. This had a steep sloping roof from which most of the slate had gone, covered in creeper. Nettles grew high around it screening a short arched door. The gaps in the stonework under what had once been the gable formed a colony of nests. Birds flew to and fro.
“The sun’s shining again,” Erica was saying, “over there.”
Miss Frayle peered through the trees across the deserted road to the river.
“Someone’s in a boat,” she said. She watched a small, open motorboat move slowly against the tide with two oilskin-clad figures in her.
“Fishing by the look of it,” Erica said. Then suddenly she was listening, her eyes on the road. “There’s a car coming from Dormouse Creek direction. It could be Jim. Hear it? Sounds as if it’s on its last legs, that’ll be him.”
Quickly Erica picked up one case and plunged through the graveyard towards the road, intent on stopping the approaching car before it had rattled past.
Miss Frayle was about to follow when a sudden flutter of wings brought her attention round to the ruined vestry. The birds flew off into the trees, chattering in alarm. Miss Frayle thought Erica’s sudden dash towards the approaching car must have disturbed them. Then she realized with a shock that it wasn’t that at all. She stood staring, too scared to move.
The door under the creeper-covered vestry roof was slowly opening.
Chapter Nine
MISS FRAYLE STOOD still, the sound of her heart loud in her ears. Momentarily she had forgotten that Erica Travers was only a few yards away, standing in the road frantically waving at the oncoming sports-car. Miss Frayle had eyes only for the moving door.
A figure of a man appeared. Too far away and partly screened by shrubs and creeper for her to see him clearly, Miss Frayle saw only the back of his long raincoat. A dark hat covered his head. He half-turned towards the road, attracted by Erica’s voice and the sound of the car engine. Then he pushed the door to, and stumbled off with a limp, disappearing into the shadows of the trees beyond.
Erica was calling to her, and Miss Frayle blinking behind her horn-rims, pulled herself together and forced her legs to carry her through the graveyard to the road.
When she joined Erica she showed no signs of the agitation she had suffered. She managed to smile brightly to the young man Erica was introducing.
“Jim Rayner,” Erica said. “Whose family motto is: ‘Better late than never’.”
Jim Rayner grinned ruefully. He was a sun-tanned young man with tousled reddish hair. His eyes were greenish with a friendly glint in them and Miss Frayle judged that despite her joking tone, Erica was obviously delighted to see him. “Look at us,” Erica was saying. “Wet, tired and our stockings so laddered they’re only good for firemen.”
“I’m darned sorry, Erica,” Jim said. “But I just couldn’t get the so-and-so to start.”
He indicated the ancient-looking touring car behind him, which it seemed to Miss Frayle, should have gone to the scrap-heap twenty years ago. There were rents in the canvas hood and no sidescreens. The seats were low on the floor. There was only one windscreen wiper and the body and wings were dented. It was painted green, but it was difficult to see the colour through the mud. The nicest parts about it were the headlamps, Miss Frayle thought. They were huge, round and chromium.
“Mag trouble,” Jim Rayner said. “She got a soaking last night, and I had to bake it.” He noticed Miss Frayle looking at the car, and added proudly: “She’s real vintage, you know. Don’t make anything like them to-day.”
“Can you blame them,” Erica said quickly. “But will it go now?”
Miss Frayle noticed that the engine had stopped.
“Get in and we’ll run her down the hill.”
Erica climbed into the back wedged in with the suitcases, while Miss Frayle sat in front. When she had finally arranged her legs under the dashboard, Jim Rayner dropped himself next to her into the driving seat, switched on, pushed the short gear lever into first gear and kept his foot on the clutch, then released the handbrake. The car started to coast down the incline, just as it began raining again.
“Once she’s away, I’ll turn round in that gateway there,” Jim said.
Without any warning he suddenly let in the clutch. The car jolted almost to a stop and Miss Frayle was thrown forward and just managed to save herself hitting the windscreen. The engine misfired and roared and the car lurched forward again and Miss Frayle was forced back hard in the seat. While Miss Frayle rearranged her skirt and straightened her glasses, the young man beside her said agreeably:
“You all right, Miss Frayle?”
“I’m all right,” Miss Frayle said, and prepared herself for the next shock. But Jim was careful after that. He turned round smoothly in the gateway and drove sedately up the hill and passed the copse again.
Miss Frayle could see little of where she was going in spite of being in the front. Rain splashed the cracked windscreen so that her vision was blurred beyond the bonnet and if she turned to look out of the side she had the rain in her face as well as all the drops that blew in from the side of the hood. She pressed herself as far into the centre of the car as she could, and told Erica over her shoulder about the man appearing out of the vestry.
“They say the place is supposed to be haunted,” Jim said when she had finished. Miss Frayle glanced at him, and he grinned at her cheerfully.
“Nonsense,” Erica said quickly. “That’s an old story that got around years ago. Probably a tramp you saw, sheltering from the rain. Same as us.”
The subject was forgotten as the road turned away from the river, suddenly climbed over a steep wooded rise, and Jim changed down with a crashing of gears. Slowing almost to a walking pace he negotiated a sharp hump-backed bridge with the remark that he didn’t want Miss Frayle’s head to make a hole in his hood. He drove on slowly.
The rain had slackened and Miss Frayle, sensing that they were nearing their destination at last, gla
nced out of the car.
She could see a stretch of meadowland with stunted trees lining a wide ditch. On the further side a small herd of black and white cattle grazed, beyond was a river wall and she guessed Dormouse Creek lay behind this. The grassy wall continued endlessly towards where she imagined the main river to be. But she was as yet too low to see the creek.
A little further along the road broadened and levelled itself with the wall which had now become a kind of wooden quay. There were mooring-rings attached to the timbers and a broken-down flagstaff. A small jetty stuck out into the water and there was a clumsy-looking rowing-boat tied up to the jetty ladder. Thirty or forty yards away from the quay, just below where the river wall began was a rambling two-storey brick and boarded building which Jim Rayner pointed to.
As they slowly passed Miss Frayle could see the sign and for a moment a vision passed across her mind of someone swinging from a gallows. The inexplicable mental picture vanished and with a shiver she saw that it was an inn-sign, picturing the faded figure of a man carrying a gun, with a dog at his heels, above it the inscription: The Wildfowler. It looked a drab, depressing place, but she had to confess to herself that the weather and the desolate scene accounted for the impression she received.
“Dormouse Creek?” Miss Frayle said to Erica indicating the mud and water. “Where’s the houseboat?”
“If this rattletrap had a wiper you’d see it from here,” Erica said.
“There’s our store.” Jim was pointing to a cottage with a neat hedge lining the road, old advertisements for tea and pickles plastered on the windows of its single front room. “Paraffin for your oil-lamps, and new-laid eggs for breakfast.”
“Are there any other houseboats besides the Moya?” Miss Frayle said.
“Two more,” Erica leaned forward. “But they’re all moored a good distance from each other, so no one’s really overlooked.”
“Best of this spot, you know,” Jim said. “The scenery might be flat and unspectacular, facilities practically nil, but you can do just as you like without fear of being taken for a crank. Even weekends during the height of the summer, it never gets crowded. Apart from the odd yacht ditch-crawling, you hardly see a stranger from one week’s end to another. Yet Southend isn’t fifteen miles away.”
Then Jim Rayner was stopping the car beside a long black hull moored to the bank a few yards away.
“Here we are,” Erica said. Miss Frayle caught the excitement in her voice, and the next moment she was out of the car.
Jim got out and dragged the suitcases after him, placing them on the grassy bank at the end of a narrow gangway leading to the deck of the houseboat. The rain had practically stopped, but the wind was still strong, jostling the low clouds impatiently above the landscape. An invigorating and salty tang filled the air, mixed with it the boaty smell of tar and rope, and the peculiar scent of the marsh.
The only sign of life aboard the Moya was a wisp of smoke that was whisked away from the bent chimney. The boat must have been seventy feet in length, heavily-built in a way that reminded Miss Frayle of those old sailing-barges she had seen on the Thames. It had a stumpy mast and wide, clean decks with a long varnished coach roof containing two pairs of skylights. The large round portholes in the coaming were fringed with curtains and there was a big sliding-hatch leading below.
The coach roof ended aft in a deckhouse with large observation windows on all sides and this opened on to a wide afterdeck with a space enough for deck-chairs when the sun was shining. Although the hull was black and it sat on the mud over which the tide was now creeping, Miss Frayle thought it looked most attractive, with its bright metal work and varnished superstructure.
“See you this evening,” Jim said to Miss Frayle as he climbed into the car. He had dumped the suitcases on the deck.
“I’ve asked him over for a drink,” Erica said.
“Where do you live?” Miss Frayle said as she and Erica watched from the end of the gangway, wondering if he would get his engine to start. He pointed over a bramble-covered bank where a white cottage stood among the trees.
“I hope Erica will bring you over,” he said, and pressed the starter. After a couple of attempts the engine roared into life and the car jerked off in a stream of blue exhaust smoke. They watched him head in the direction of his cottage.
“He’s nice, even if slightly mad,” Erica said as she turned on the gangway. “Come on.” She led the way up to the deck and went aft. “We’ll find Aunt Edith below. I’ll take you down through the deckhouse, the companion’s not so awkward as the hatch.”
Erica opened the door and went in. As Miss Frayle turned to follow, her attention was attracted along the road towards the Wildfowler Inn. It was deserted save for one figure. A man in a long raincoat and dark hat.
Chapter Ten
FOR A MOMENT Miss Frayle could have sworn it was the man she had seen in the ruins of the graveyard, but as the figure approached she decided she must be mistaken. On such a day and in this part of the world, she could, she felt, expect to see several people similarly dressed. Besides, she saw now, with an involuntary relaxation of the tension which had once more so oddly seized her, that this man did not walk with a limp.
She heard Erica call and with a little smile at her foolish fears she went into the deckhouse. The novel and comfortable surroundings in which she found herself immediately drove any alarming thoughts that may have troubled her completely from her mind.
Aunt Edith made a surprising and undeniably impressive impact, her individual appearance and personality was unique in Miss Frayle’s experience, and during her employment with Dr. Morelle she had encountered not a few extraordinary types.
Erica’s aunt was a tall, hefty-looking woman in her early fifties. She wore dark blue sailcloth trousers hitched round her ample waist with a leather belt, and the thick navy jersey. Her hair was dark, close-cropped with hardly a streak of grey, and with her strong sunburnt face and neck gave her a somewhat fierce appearance, no doubt capable of taking command of any situation, but there were laughter-lines around her blue eyes, and a twinkle in them.
She reminded Miss Frayle irresistibly of a good-natured pirate.
Miss Frayle had first been taken aback by the other’s appearance when she had barged through the further door as Erica and herself had stepped off the companion-ladder from the deckhouse into the large comfortably furnished cabin which Erica described as the saloon.
“Aunt Edith, this is Miss Frayle,” Erica said and the big woman came forward an arm outstretched. “Miss Travers.”
“How do you do, Miss Travers —”
“Call me Aunt Edith, it’ll be easier.” And then the other went on to explain that she had heard their arrival, but couldn’t show herself as she was just changing her trousers. Miss Frayle had winced a trifle under the pressure of the handshake and had been surprised once more at the toughness of the woman’s skin. It was hard and calloused, as if she had been pulling ropes or rowing a boat all her life.
“Some fool in the village,” Aunt Edith was saying, “said they’d seen a black-necked grebe up at Willow Mere. I was sure it was a mistake, but had to go up to see. All I found was a curlew. I was pretty wet I can tell you. I didn’t mind that but on the way back stepped into a mudhole. I was cleaning up when I heard the car.” She smiled at them. “Just as well you were late. I suppose young Rayner’s box-of-tricks broke down?”
“It wouldn’t start,” Erica said. “We walked as far as the old church and he caught up with us there.”
“About where he’ll end up if he drives that old wreck much longer,” Aunt Edith said. “In the churchyard. Still, I’m glad he turned up. I expect you’re hungry and damp. I lit the fire because I knew you’d want to dry out. Take Miss Frayle and show her to her quarters, and the bathroom.”
Miss Frayle followed Erica across the saloon and out through the door by which Aunt Edith had appeared. She found herself in a bright cream-painted corridor with a low-beamed ceiling. Eri
ca explained that they were now going for’ard and that the narrow doors on their right with polished brass handles were the cabins. The first door was Aunt Edith’s, next the bathroom, then came the midship companion leading down from the sliding hatch Miss Frayle had noticed from outside. Next were the guest’s cabins. Three in all, and two of them double-berthed. Erica had the first, and Miss Frayle the one next door.
“Where does that door lead?” Miss Frayle said, pointing to the handle in the bulkhead at the end of the corridor.
“Fo’c’sle,” Erica said. “It’s got four folding berths. Right up for’ard is the store for everything. Paint, ropes, paraffin. Aunt’s got everything imaginable in there. You get to it through the hatch in the foredeck.” She opened the door of the cabin.
Miss Frayle stepped over the high threshold into a small bedroom, with a low berth on each side. Between the foot of each bunk at the end of the cabin was a neat dressing-table. On either side of this filling the space under the side-deck was a wardrobe. Under the berths were long drawers and the floor was covered with plain blue carpet. In the corner behind the door was a tall enamel jug and above it a folding washbasin.
“I’m afraid there’s no water laid on, except in Aunt Edith’s cabin,” Erica said. “Have to get your water from the bathroom.”
“It’s wonderful,” Miss Frayle said. She was impressed by the comfort she had certainly not expected to find when she had seen the boat from outside. “Where does the water for the bathroom come from?”
“Big covered tank on the fo’c’sle,” Erica said. “It’s for’ard of the mast, I don’t suppose you noticed it. Pipes run from it to the bathroom, Aunt’s cabin and the galley.”
Dr Morelle and Destiny Page 6
