Here Comes a Chopper

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘I can’t think now why we refused a perfectly good offer of sandwiches at that wretched roadhouse,’ he groaned. They had long ago eaten all the chocolate he had brought in his rucksack. ‘Why on earth didn’t we sit down and begin when she gave us the chance?’

  ‘She wasn’t a nice barmaid, and it wasn’t a nice place,’ said Dorothy. She spoke firmly. She was young enough to be annoyed when people thought her under the legal age for drinks. ‘I should hate to have had anything there. I’m sure we’ll find somewhere quite soon.’

  ‘If we don’t, you’ll have a corpse on your hands,’ said Roger. Before them appeared the line of the roofs of some houses. With renewed hope they stepped out more briskly, and entered a village. Down the middle of the village street marched a line of ducks. They bobbed, with clumsy, amusing and rather touching purposefulness, one behind another, like a file of stout, heavy women all going to market. Roger and Dorothy followed. Suddenly Roger said softly:

  ‘Don’t look now, but, when you do, see if you see what I see. Although I really think it’s a mirage.’

  Dorothy smiled.

  ‘I saw it before you spoke. I think it’s a pub.’

  It was a pub. It sported a large green board which advertised beers. Its own sign proved to be that of the Dog and Duck. It was not impressive to look at, although it was freshly painted and very clean. It was small, low-roofed, and was set well back from the road.

  ‘They’ll have to give us something,’ said Roger, stalking into the public bar whilst Dorothy remained on the doorstep. The small, narrow room contained, besides the bar counter, two men, a woman, a baby in a pram, the landlord (who was wearing a yellow waistcoat) and a small black and white dog which whined and quivered, apparently with impatience, for one of the men said, ‘All right! All right! I’m a-comin’.’

  Roger’s enquiries were satisfactorily answered. The landlord provided him with a glass of rum and Dorothy with some sherry. Then he sent them round to the saloon bar. This was really the bar parlour, but it had a counter on to the public bar. It was furnished with three small tables, a set of good prints, and a yard or so of embroidery enclosed in a mahogany picture frame.

  ‘Well!’ said Roger, bestowing his blessing on the place. The landlord himself served them, placing on the counter bread, cheese, butter, meat pasties and tankards of beer. They fell to, relaxed and happy. They smiled at one another across the little square table. By the time the meal was over they felt as though they had known one another since childhood. There is magic in bread and cheese and beer.

  When the meal was over, Roger carried back to the counter the cutlery, plates and tankards, returned to his place, lighted a cigarette for Dorothy and a pipe for himself, and spread out the map on the table.

  It showed what they thought was the roadhouse, and from it they traced their route to the Dog and Duck.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Roger. ‘Now, then, where shall we go?’

  They discussed the possibilities for twenty minutes or so, and then, having mapped out their route and paid the score, they walked up the village street and came on to a by-pass road. It ran between fields with green hedges. They crossed the road and entered a high, narrow lane. Among the ground-ivy and wood anemones were dog violets. Roger, picking them carefully so as to have the stalks as long as possible, gathered a handful and gave them to the girl. Beneath their feet was the soft brown decadence of leaf-mould, spongy with rain. On one side a hill dropped down to a valley with a stream, and then the land rose in another rounded slope beyond the water. The top of the hill was crowned absurdly with holly, and farther on were beech-woods, their trunks austere, their long buds gleaming copper-coloured and having points like spears.

  There was plenty to see: the many-feathered birds, a grey horse harrowing the hillside, the rich brown turn of the soil; in the distance the quick green of larches springing like fire in the smoky, dim brown of the taller trees behind them.

  The two walked, paused and loitered, and then at last stepped out. The path dropped to fields hedged with hawthorns, and passed a cow-byre with four young, sleepy Alderneys. Farther on was the farmhouse. The farmyard was powerfully heralded by its midden, a knee-deep mass of manure and filthy straw. On the opposite side of the path a dilapidated notice-board, surmounted by the shape of a hand cut in wood, seemed to indicate some sort of sign-post, but nothing in particular could be learned from it, and the path it pointed out was narrower, more overgrown and more muddy than the one they were already following.

  Roger took out the map once more, and Dorothy looked at her watch. It was past five o’clock, and the lane showed no sign of terminating. Apart from the isolated farmhouse, they had passed no buildings for three hours.

  ‘We ought to be within sight of Dorsey,’ said Roger, ‘but I’m hanged if we are. We ought to have crossed More Heath common half an hour or more ago. Curse this confounded map! It must be wrong.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said the girl. ‘Let’s follow the path as far as that gate down there, and then, if it still seems wrong. we’ll come back to this other little path.’

  Roger took out his pocket compass and stared at it in perplexity.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said. ‘We’ve gone wrong somewhere. We ought to be walking north-east, but we’re not. We’ve veered round to north-west. I’ll tell you what I think, and you can call me names if you like. I think I picked the wrong footpath to take from that village. You know—where we stopped for grub. I’m sure now that this is the one we should have taken.’

  He pointed with the stem of his pipe.

  ‘Oh, well, never mind. It’s been just as good a walk, I expect,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘That’s one way to argue, but I do dislike to be wrong. Besides, the further we go along here, the further we get off our route.’

  ‘We can get on to some other route, then. I don’t think it really matters.’

  ‘That’s all very well. Still, perhaps we’d better carry on, as we’ve come this far. It looks to me as though that gate of yours bars our way. Doesn’t it seem to you as though it’s right across the path?’

  This did not prove to be the case. The lane made a sharp bend, and this brought the gate into full view. It opened on to unpromising, bramble-entangled land which scarcely seemed worth the fencing, but the path continued downhill.

  Just as the couple reached the gate, a prospect opened which made them feel more cheerful. Bracken, the new shoots just beginning to show, small hawthorn bushes (sinister to eyes which had read George Allingham’s poem), heather tufts, and some plants of wild strawberry, indicated a change in the soil, and away to the left the land rose, noble and spare.

  ‘This looks better,’ said Roger, as they turned aside to a ride of Downland turf. ‘Let’s sit down for a bit and take the weight off our feet, and then it ought to be easy going on this grass.’

  Very faintly, from far, far away, they could hear the sound of a bell. Then, near them, was the thudding of hoofs, and three fine horses swept by. One was ridden by a tall, big man, black-haired, flat-shouldered and handsome. A very beautiful, red-haired woman, neither young nor old, rode the second; and on the third was a lively boy with thick, fair hair, flushed cheeks, and a look of pride and happiness very pleasant to see.

  The impression, most stirring, was fleeting, for in less than a minute the riders, silhouetted for a moment against the sky at the top of the hill, thundered over the crest and were lost.

  ‘Father, mother and son, I suppose,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘Hardly likely,’ answered Roger. ‘Possible, of course, because the boy might be a recessive, but if that man and woman had children they’d be likely to have red hair.’

  This pseudo-scientific statement silenced Dorothy. She lay and meditated, a slender, round-limbed hamadryad, and Roger, watching her, said suddenly:

  ‘I say, I should like to kiss you. I suppose that would spoil your day?’

  ‘Yes, it would,’ she replied, without moving. ‘But
if it would spoil yours not to, you’d better do it, and get it over.’

  Roger spoke moodily, baffled by this reasonable answer.

  ‘I suppose most people want to?’

  ‘Yes, quite a lot of them do.’

  ‘Anybody in particular?’

  ‘Well—I suppose so. Yes.’

  ‘Oh? May I ask——?’

  ‘Yes, of course you may, but I don’t suppose I shall tell you.’

  ‘Why didn’t he come along with you today?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any particular reason. I thought you were going to ask his name.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, I don’t suppose I know him. I’ll give you some advice, if you like.’

  ‘I hardly ever take advice. I get too much from my people.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll take mine, but I do happen to know just this one thing, or I wouldn’t inflict it on you. Have you had a row with this bloke?’

  ‘I don’t see why you ask that, and it isn’t your business.’

  ‘Well, girls won’t admit it, of course, but, when you come to analyse it, rows are always—or almost always—their fault.’

  ‘Really! I like that! If you only knew——’

  ‘But, my dear child, I do know. Don’t forget that I’m three years older than you! Three and a half years, actually. Further to that, I am a man, out in the world, earning my own living——’

  ‘Two terms teaching little boys at a prep. school! I know, because Bob told me! He said you were bad at it, too!’

  ‘Look here!’ They glowered at one another until Dorothy lay back and laughed. Roger, bending over her, took her suddenly in his arms, held her very close and kissed her. The girl submitted to the kisses but did not return them.

  ‘Look out, silly! There’s somebody coming,’ she said, when she could speak.

  ‘Oh, damn!’ said Roger, letting her go, sitting up and trying to straighten his tie. Two women, appearing from nowhere, were coming behind him up the path. He did not turn his head, but could hear them talking. ‘Oh, damn! Do you think they could see us?’

  ‘Yes, of course they could! Who could help it? But perhaps they can tell us where we are.’

  ‘I should hardly think so.’ He looked austerely at the women as they passed. ‘Still, I can ask them, if you like.’

  ‘Well, we don’t know where we are, and—I want my tea.’

  ‘You poor kid!’ He leapt to his feet and went running after the women. He came back looking gloomy, and sat down again. ‘They’re employed at some big house at the foot of the hill. Apart from this house, which is miles from the nearest bus route and even more miles from a station, we are completely marooned. The best way, they say, is to keep on over the common until we see the spire of a church. We’re to keep the spire on our right—that’s if they know right from left, which I somewhat doubt—and in the end we shall come to the railway station. They say it’s a very long way, but I think we’ll have to try it, unless we go back by the way we’ve come. It might be the better plan, of course.’

  ‘I’d hate that. I hate going back.’

  ‘Good. So do I. Where’s the map?’

  They studied it closely, Roger pointing out landmarks with the aid of a stem of long grass.

  ‘Here we are, I suppose,’ said he. ‘This is the pub, and this is our track, and that’s where we gathered the violets. These contours must be that steep slope—you know, where we saw the cowslips—and this place here is the farm. Now where’s this church they mentioned? Here we are. We’re to keep it on our right, and—where’s the station? Oh, yes. It does seem a good long way. I make it——’ He measured.

  ‘Seven miles,’ said Dorothy, watching.

  ‘A conservative estimate, and only as the crow flies, at that. I’d say a lot nearer ten!’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t think so. Come along.’

  ‘Yes, we’d better get a move on.’ He put away the map and hauled her up. ‘How would you like to borrow my ashplant for a bit?’

  ‘Not at all, thank you. I’m very much happier without it.’

  ‘Just as you like. Hullo!’

  There was the sound of hoofs again, and this time the boy they had previously seen went by like a Cyclops, his horse, on a loose rein, thundering. Of the man and the red-haired woman there was no sign. The boy did not pass very close. He galloped away across the common in the direction they intended to take, but, a hazel wood opening to leave a broad avenue of turf, he turned his horse towards it, and was soon out of sight and out of hearing.

  Roger and Dorothy stepped out briskly in his wake, and, pausing only to look at a rabbit which was sunning itself in the clearing—for the early evening had turned mellow—they took the broad path through the hazels and climbed rapidly up the slope to the top of the hill.

  ‘We shan’t be long now,’ said Dorothy. Roger, shifting the rucksack upon his shoulders, glanced at her but said nothing. ‘Well, do you think so?’ she asked.

  ‘I think we shall have had enough of it by the time we get to that station,’ he replied.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Call for the best the house may ring,

  Sack, white, and claret, let them bring,

  And drink apace, while breath you have;

  You’ll find but cold drink in the grave:

  Plover, partridge, for your dinner,

  And a capon for the sinner….

  Welcome, welcome, shall fly round,

  And I shall smile, though under ground.’

  JOHN FLETCHER, The Dead Host’s Welcome (possibly Shirley or Massinger)

  FROM THE TOP of the hill they could see the spire of the church. Obedient to the counsel of the women, they kept it resolutely on their right, and walked for some time on level turf, for the top of the hill proved to be a grassy plateau with a very fine view to the south.

  Woods then bordered the track which they were following, and the sun, which had come out only at the approach of evening, slanted through the trees in a red-gold glow. Roger discovered that he was holding Dorothy’s hand, but, having made the discovery, he kept it to himself, and they walked on, having the church in view, until the woods ended on a common and the track petered out on to grass and was discoverable only as rabbit-runs among the low-growing gorse. In trying to pick it out again, they came upon a burnt-out car.

  ‘A relic of the war,’ said Roger, inspecting it. ‘The army had all this land, I believe. I suppose they used this car for target practice. Seem to be taking it to bits now.’

  Dorothy was not particularly interested, and said nothing. They walked on. The ground became uneven, and walking was difficult. There were lumps and bumps, and the church, now far to the right, and a mile or more behind them, ceased to be a landmark. The sun had almost set, and it occurred to both the walkers that the common was desolate and that they were becoming uncomfortably hungry.

  ‘I say, I wish I could see some sign of that station,’ said Roger. ‘Are you very tired?’

  ‘No. I could walk for hours longer.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. My legs ache, so yours must.’

  ‘They don’t, a bit.’

  ‘Can you see any sign of the station?’

  They halted and looked around. Behind them the little lost church showed nothing but the top of its spire above the trees. To the left was the edge of the plateau, a down-dropping brownish slope, green at the foot and stretching away to the faint pink and purple of woods and the round-backed Downs.

  In front of them the broken ground began to give place to more trees, and traces of a path invited them to descend through birch and pine woods. The distances were blue and misty with evening. The sun soon set, and the sky, although flushed, was fading to the cloudy colours of night. Roger was genuinely anxious, and glanced often at his companion, but Dorothy stalked beside him like Artemis, her chin up and her mouth half-smiling, as though fatigue and anxiety were beyond her comprehension. With some suddenness he discovered that he was in love with her. />
  ‘Look!’ he said, at last. Below them they saw a house. It stood, ghostly white, in a clearing of the woods. It had a lawn in front and bushes on either side. It was like a house in an eighteenth-century drawing. There were the severely-classical pillars and round-headed windows of the period, the squat, square door, the porch with its uncompromising, beautifully spaced supports, and, dominating all detail, the extraordinary and impeccable symmetry of a building designed for the taste of an era in which no servant problem existed, and in which a lasting civilization was (unwarrantably) taken for granted.

  ‘I think we must be on private land,’ said Dorothy. ‘I’ve thought so for about the last mile.’

  ‘I know.’ Roger looked unhappy. ‘But I think we’ll have to risk that. If those women told the truth—and I’m sure they did—we’re still some miles from the station. I propose I ask at that house. Who knows? They might even offer us a lift, and I shouldn’t feel inclined to refuse it.’

  ‘I don’t think they will,’ said Dorothy, who, within the limits set by her youth, knew her world. ‘Especially if these woods are preserved. They’re more likely to set the dogs on us, 1 should say.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Roger, struck by a new and immensely more serious thought, ‘what are we going to do if you can’t get home?’

  ‘What would you and Bob have done?’

  ‘Oh—anything. In any case, we weren’t going home, so it wouldn’t have mattered.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now. It might if my people were at home, but there’s only Bob, and he won’t worry, if I know him.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s something,’ said Roger, not at all sure that it made much difference. ‘But, still—I say, what a glorious old house it is!’

  They stopped to look at it again. Its beautiful proportions were its charm. They could now see that it had a central portico approached by a flight of broad steps, and that its four Doric columns supported an entablature and a pediment which had a wreath designed in stone. The central doorway, broadly panelled and painted white, was surmounted by a wide, square window, and the other windows of the house were similar in form, but a little narrower and longer. Only the basement windows were round-headed, and, of these, there were four to be seen.