Mystery Mile (7 page)

He glanced over his shoulder to where the fortune teller sat upright in the window-seat, the candlelight making fantastic shadows on his unusual face. He was speaking in the same
subdued monotone, which they could hear quite plainly without being able to distinguish the words.

They could not see the rector's face. He was bending forward, his hands cupped before the stranger.

‘He seems interested all right,' said Marlowe.

Biddy laughed. ‘Doesn't he?' she said. ‘I do hope he's promising him plenty of adventures. He has led such a good quiet life.'

‘I doubt if he'd like it,' said Giles. ‘Tranquillity has always been St Swithin's note.'

‘That seems to be the note of the whole place,' said Judge Lobbett, and sighed.

‘Hullo, they've finished,' Marlowe said, as the rector and the stranger came down the room together. The fortune teller was smiling, suave and completely at ease. Swithin Cush looked thoughtful.

Biddy turned to him smiling. ‘What sort of luck did you have, St Swithin?' she said.

The old man put a hand on her shoulder. ‘My dear, I'm too old to have any fortune at all,' he said. He pulled out his old turnip watch. ‘I must go to bed,' he remarked. ‘I know you won't mind.' He turned to Judge Lobbett. ‘We keep early hours in the country.'

He spoke the words absently as if he did not expect any reply, and while the others gathered round the fortune teller he returned once more to the girl. ‘Good night, my dear,' he said. ‘Give my love to Giles.'

She looked up at him without surprise. He often said unexpected things; but as she did so she caught his eyes before he had time to lower them, and for an instant she was afraid.

The old man departed, taking his storm lantern from Cuddy in the hall, although the night was fine and moonlit.

The fortune teller still dominated the room, and the old man's going made very little impression. The stranger's quiet, even voice was raised a little in surprise.

‘I did not realize that it was so late,' he said. ‘It was a longer drive here than I expected. I can tell only one more fortune. I will read the hand aloud so that you can all hear. Let it be
someone to whom I can promise nothing but happiness.' He turned to Isopel. ‘Will you permit me to tell yours?'

The girl looked at him dubiously, but with Giles at her side and Marlowe and Mr Campion leaning over the settee behind her, it seemed ridiculous to be afraid.

The stranger took her hand in his own, and when he turned his palm uppermost they saw with a little surprise that the natural fold of his hand made no permanent crease. The skin was smooth and unlined.

‘I was right,' he said, holding the girl's small hand out for inspection. ‘You have had troubles; they will end, though not perhaps as you expect. You will love, you will be loved. I see you in strange company at least twice in your life. The thing you remember most clearly,' he went on with sudden intensity, ‘is lying on a bed of thick fur with the head of an animal looking down at you. Isn't that so?'

Judge Lobbett and his daughter exchanged astonished glances, and a smothered exclamation escaped Marlowe. Giles and Biddy glanced at their visitor inquiringly, and after some hesitation Isopel explained. ‘When I was a child,' she said, ‘we were on holiday in the Rockies. I got lost. A trapper found me and I stayed in his cabin for a few hours until father found me. The trapper told me to lie down, and I rested on a heap of skins by the fire. There was a bear skin on the wall with a roughly stuffed head. I couldn't take my eyes off it. It was terrible, grotesque, and out of shape. It's one of my most usual nightmares. I don't know how you knew,' she finished, staring at the fortune teller, her dark eyes widening as she realized the wonder.

The stranger smiled and went on. His voice revealed a soothing quality.

‘You will have your dark hour,' he said, ‘but it will pass. There is serenity for you. Beware of strangers, although you will not marry one of your own people. Your domains will be wide, and you will know the peace which is the lowing of kine over small meadows. That is your fortune. It is a pity that I cannot promise as much to you all.'

He spoke the last words softly, and although his tone was
unchanged, the soothing effect of Isopel's reading was completely spoiled, and an unpleasant flavour remained.

He made his adieux immediately afterwards, and Giles and Marlowe settled with him, paying the trifling sum he demanded with some surprise.

The car disappeared down the narrow road. As it passed, the whistle that had heralded its approach sounded once more from the garden. The seven cries were repeated one after the other, each fainter and farther off than the one before. Mr Campion and Giles were standing with Marlowe.

‘Seven,' said Giles. ‘The Seven Whistlers. That means the end of the world, so they say.'

‘That means he's gone,' said Mr Campion with relief. ‘My respected friends George and 'Anry, with their five sons, have performed their spot of policing with great success. No one comes over the Stroud at night in future without our knowing on the moment. These blessed lads are posted every five hundred yards along the road. The moment a stranger passes any one of them – well, it's Owl Friday. Trespassers will be persecuted, you see.'

They went back towards the door laughing. Biddy met them on the threshold. Judge Lobbett and his daughter were behind her, and a stout perplexed old woman who had evidently entered by the back way hovered at her side.

Biddy was pale and her brown eyes spoke unnamed terrors. There was something in her hand which she held out to her brother.

‘Giles,' she said, ‘look at this. Alice has just brought it over.'

The boy took the crumpled piece of paper and the big old-fashioned ring she gave him. It lay gleaming in his hand.

‘“Giles and Albert come over alone,”' he read slowly.

A look of horror suddenly dawned in his face.

‘St Swithin!' he said breathlessly. ‘His ring! He would never part with that unless –'

The words were silenced by a sound which reached them clearly through the open window, sharp and unmistakable. A gunshot on the night air.

THE OLD WOMAN
screamed, a shrill stifled sound in her throat. They caught a fleeting impression of her face, still and horrified, as if carved out of red sandstone, her small black eyes dilated. She suddenly started for the door.

Mr Campion laid a hand upon her arm. He was unnaturally quiet in his movements, his face expressionless.

‘Wait, Alice,' he said. ‘Giles and I will go first.'

‘Leave I go,' said the old woman, wrenching her arm away. ‘Leave I go, I tell 'ee.'

Biddy came forward. ‘Stay here, Alice,' she said gently. ‘Stay here. He said they were to go alone.'

Alice suffered herself to be led back into the room. Judge Lobbett stood between his two children, an inscrutable expression on his face. Isopel clung to him. Marlowe looked on gravely, ready to help when the occasion should arise.

Mr Campion touched Giles upon the shoulder. ‘Come along,' he said. They hurried out of the house together.

The Rectory lay across the green, standing back from the road down a long ill-kept gravelled drive lined with heavy shrubberies and tall trees. The house appeared to be in darkness as they approached, but the front door stood open under the ivy-covered porch.

Mr Campion turned to Giles. ‘Let me go first,' he said softly. ‘You never know.'

Giles hung back unwillingly, but he did not attempt to remonstrate. Campion went on into the dark house alone.

In front of him a door stood open through which the room beyond was faintly visible.

He went in.

A moment or so later he reappeared on the porch. Giles caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight.

‘Come in, will you, old boy?' he said quietly, and Giles knew that the question which had been on his lips had been answered.

The two men went quietly into the house. The old rector's study was the only room with any light in it, and that was given only by the hurricane lantern which he had brought from the Dower House such a short while ago. It stood upon the heavy writing table shedding a diffused light over parts of the sombre place. It was a big rectangular room with a fireplace at one end and a bay window at the other and bookshelves ranged all along the intervening walls.

The desk was set parallel to the fireplace, and the rector's old chair with its dilapidated leather seat was pushed back from it as if he had just risen. The fire glowed dully in the grate.

Giles looked round anxiously.

‘Where?' he began, and Campion pointed silently to a door corresponding to the one through which they had entered, on the other side of the fireplace. Giles recognized it as leading to the tiny robing-room which a thoughtful ancestor of his own had built off the study. The door was closed, and from under it there issued a thin dark trickle of blood on the worn brown linoleum.

Giles walked over and opened the door. He struck a match and held it high. The flickering light filled the tiny apartment for an instant and died out. His hand fell to his side. Then he shut the door unsteadily and turned to Campion. His face was very pale, and he moistened his lips with his tongue nervously.

‘His old shotgun,' he said.

Campion nodded.

‘In his mouth – tied a string to the trigger. It's the usual way.' The boy sank down in the chair. ‘Suicide?' he said. ‘My God – old St Swithin!'

Campion stood staring at the closed door. ‘Why?' he said. ‘In the name of all that's extraordinary,
why
?'

A step in the hall startled them both. Alice Broom, the housekeeper, appeared on the threshold. Her black eyes fixed them questioningly.

‘He shot hisself?' she burst out. ‘I saw the old gun was gone, but I never thought. Oh, dear Lord, have mercy on his soul!' She flopped down on her knees where she was and covered her face with her hands.

The sight of her helplessness brought Giles to himself. He and Campion lifted her up, and together they led her to the chair by the desk. She started away from it like a frightened sheep.

‘Not in his chair. I'll not sit in his chair,' she said hysterically. ‘The chair of the dead!'

The unexpectedness of her superstition breaking through her grief startled them oddly: They sat her down in the armchair by the fireplace, where she sat sobbing quietly into her cupped hands.

Campion took command of the situation.

‘Look here, Giles,' he said, ‘we shall want a doctor and the police. You haven't either in the village, have you?'

Giles shook his head. ‘No. We shall have to get old Wheeler over from Heronhoe. The nearest bobby's there, too. Campion, this is ghastly. Why did he do it? Why did he do it?'

The other pointed to a letter propped up against the inkstand on the desk, next to the lantern. It was addressed in Swithin Cush's spidery old-fashioned writing:

HENRY TOPLISS, ESQ
.

‘Who's that? The coroner?' he demanded. Giles nodded, and again the incredulous expression passed over his face.

‘He must have done it quite deliberately,' he said. ‘I can't understand it. You don't think that fortune teller –'

Campion put his hand up warningly. There was the sound of feet in the hall.

Biddy came first, the others behind her. Her face was white and twisted with anxiety. She glanced round the room and her eye fell upon the closed door almost immediately. With a little
cry she advanced towards it. Campion darted forward and drew her back.

‘No, old dear, don't go in,' he said softly. ‘You can't do anything.' The hand he held grew cold and the slender fingers bit into his flesh.

Campion put his arm round her until Isopel Lobbett came up, and, slipping her hand through Biddy's, led her to a chair by the fire.

Judge Lobbett and Marlowe came forward and Giles explained the situation to them as well as he could.

The old man was horrified.

‘This is terrible,' he said. ‘Terrible! I –' Words seemed to fail him, and he stood silent for a moment, rendered completely helpless by the shock. Gradually his old practical self reasserted itself. ‘Isopel,' he said gently, ‘take Miss Paget back to the Dower House and stay there with her, my dear, while we see what's to be done here.'

Campion joined the two younger men. ‘Giles,' he said, ‘if you and Marlowe would take a car and go in to Heronhoe and bring back a doctor and the police, that's as much as we can do. I'll get Alice up to her room. And then, if you don't mind, sir,' he added, turning to old Lobbett, ‘we'll wait for them here.'

The two younger men jumped at the chance of doing something, and hurried off.

Isopel and Biddy went back to the Dower House. Biddy did not cry, but her face had not lost the strained twisted look which had been noticeable when she first came into the Rectory.

Campion watched her out of the doorway and then turned his attention to Alice. The problem of her disposal would have presented untold difficulties had it not been suddenly solved by the unexpected appearance of George. The old man had heard the shot while watching in the Dower garden and had followed Judge Lobbett over.

Hat in hand, his eyes goggling, he listened to the curt explanation Campion gave him.

‘Rector dead,' he said, and repeated the words over and over again to himself, the horror and shock which he felt slowly becoming visible on his face.

‘I'll take Al-us along,' he said at last. ‘She's my sister. My wife'll take care o' she. She's looked after he so long this'll come like a shock to her, like.'

He helped the old woman to her feet and guided her with awkward elaborateness out of the room.

‘Good night. Good night,' he said.

Campion hurried after him. ‘George,' he said, ‘don't rouse the village, will you?'