“We ought to put her in with the others, you know,” said Anthony.
I took the torch and made my way round the side of the limestone-built, turf-covered burial place and entered the first of the chambers. It was a short passage rounded out at the end. It was bitterly cold in there and I imagined it still had the smell of death on it from the corpses which had lain in it four thousand years before. When I got back to the others, Gloria was back in her box and the others were sitting on the lid. They rose, we formed up like bearers, three on either side of the box, and bore it towards the passage I had entered.
“This is number thirty-seven,” said William Underedge. “Make her welcome. She is very cold.”
I struggled out of my dream and found that all my bed-coverings were on the floor and also that a sashcord had parted and the window was wide open.
I went to visit Aunt Eglantine on my way back to my flat next day.
“I want you to buy me a doll,” she said. I laughed and told her that a Teddy bear would be more companionable and more cuddly. “No,” she said, “I fancy a doll. A rag doll would be best, but I doubt whether they make such things nowadays.”
“I saw something I think might be what you mean,” I told her, “but it was in the shop called Trends and ruinously expensive, I expect.”
“Well, what’s money to you, when I’m going to leave you a million pounds?” she retorted. “You must do as I ask, or I shall never sleep peacefully again. That girl killed herself, didn’t she?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“Then she must not be allowed to walk. They do, you know, if precautions are not taken. This is what I want you to do.”
So I bought the doll—it was, as I had anticipated, extremely expensive—and took it to Aunt Eglantine. On the bed was a tangle of wool, some of it black, some of it orange.
“Look here,” I said, “you don’t want to dabble in this kind of thing. Chaucer’s Madame Eglantine would never have dreamed of such heathen goings-on.”
“Witchcraft must be met with witchcraft,” said the old lady. “I hope you cut the holly and did not buy it.”
“Anthony had a tree in his garden.”
“You will have to glue this wool on to the doll’s head when I’ve teased it out a bit more.” I sat silent while her old fingers pulled at and fluffed up the wool. Then she told me what I was to do with the doll, but after my dream, which had been detailed and extraordinarily vivid, I could not face Belas Knap again. I took the box containing the holly-pierced doll to Uley. I did not ask for the key to the long barrow, for the last thing I wanted was to advertise my presence in the neighbourhood on this occasion. I put the box, with the orange-and-black-haired doll in it, under my arm. Then I got out of the car and walked alongside the big field to Hetty Pegler’s Tump. I laid the box down on Hetty Pegler’s whale-like side and extracted the doll. Then I wondered whether Aunt Eg had intended me to use the box as a coffin (a curious tie-up here with my dream), but, as I doubted whether Neolithic man had concerned himself with coffins, I slung the box and then its lid over the rounded hump of the long barrow and laid the parti-colour-haired doll on the miry ground, wedged up against the wooden door of the burial mound. I knew I should have to lie to Miss Eglantine, but, even if I had had a key to the place, nothing on earth would have induced me to open up and put the pierced body of Gloria Mundy’s representative inside that ghost-haunted long barrow.
I trusted that rain and the Cotswold snow would soon do their worst to the doll, and so render it an unacceptable object for any innocent child to pick up and cherish.
About the Author
Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and history, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.
Here Lies Gloria Mundy (Mrs. Bradley) Page 20
