more closely together, and closer to the path. Overhead, the dense netting of limb and leaf seemed to grow denser. My brave unflinching mount, perhaps sensing its rider’s unease, twitched his ears and flicked his head from side to side. He whickered-nervously, I judged. I was about to turn him back, return to the comfort and safety of the manor, when I saw that, up ahead, the path opened onto a sunlit clearing. I kicked Storm lightly, and he trotted reluctantly forward.
We stopped when we reached the light. In the clearing was a pond, perhaps fifty feet across, smooth and glossy in the sunshine, but as black as a pool of tar. Grey rushes sagged along its banks.
To the right, some twenty feet away, crouched an old mill house.
It was a ruin: the grey thatched roof was torn and tufted, the grey stone walls were crumbling, the big grey wooden wheel, collapsed from its shaft, lay atilt in the murky stream, buckled and smashed.
Beneath that gaudy sun, under that taut blue canopy of sky, the ruin should have seemed quaint, rustic, picturesque. It did not. It seemed to me (and again you will claim that I invent) ominous, even sinister. The exposed ribs of the roofing, gaunt and rotting, seemed somehow grotesque. The grey stones of the disintegrating walls seemed to radiate a kind of bitter, empty cold. One got the feeling, I got the feeling, that the mill had been abandoned because of some long-ago, horrific death which took place here: some slaughter or pestilence.
I suddenly realized that this was the old mill Cecily had mentioned at dinner. The old mill where came, so she said, the two mysterious ghosts, the mother and the small boy.
I glanced to my left, and there, across the pond, was the willow tree, its pale branches draped over the black water like a woman’s hair over a basin. And there, in the shade beneath it, as real and as substantial as everything else, as real as anything I have ever seen, the two of them stood. A tall slender woman and a slender young boy.
Do you know the opening to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor? Those three abrupt notes from the organ, so swift and harsh and chill? When I saw the two figures silently standing there, exactly where they ought to be, but could not be, I felt those notes hammer through me, blood and bone, as if my spine were an organ, and some demented organist were flailing at it.
They were there, Evy. I saw them. They were there, under the willow tree, the woman and the young boy.
At first they were gazing at each other, the woman’s hand along the boy’s cheek. She was wearing white, he was wearing black. Then, as I watched, she dropped her arm and the two of them turned toward me. They gazed at me from across the glistening, pitch-black pond.
I feel that, whatever my faults, I am a woman of basically sound mind. Or so I once felt, before I arrived at Maplewhite. At any rate, my reaction, when they turned to me, was less stalwart than I should have hoped. And certainly less so than Mrs Applewhite would have demanded of me.
I panicked completely. I tugged at the reins, snapping poor Storm’s head around. As he spun about, lunging back down the path, I raked his flanks with my spurs. I whacked at him with the crop, again and again, like a maniac.
But how we raced! Storm was a marvel, swift and strong and powerful, and we thundered over the earth like some mythological beast. Trees whisked by us, the path spun away beneath. It’s been years since I’ve had a horse under me: if I hadn’t already been reeling with fear, I should have been reeling with excitement. I think that perhaps I was, even so.
I rose higher in the stirrups and turned around, to look back. This was an error. A low-hanging branch smashed into my shoulder and I toppled, buttock over bonnet, from the saddle.
I cannot remember alighting. I was unconscious for a time-I couldn’t say for how long-and then I was lying on my back and something was thumping me in the side.
Storm.
I attributed his concern, at first, to a laudable equine loyalty; but realized, when his nose nudged at me again, that he was after his sugar. I clambered to my feet and determined that I was more or less intact. No bones appeared to be broken.
The horse, big boorish brute, was still prodding me. I gave him a few lumps of his damnable sugar and then climbed stiffly back into the saddle.
Speed seemed less crucial now. No ghosts pursued me. My body throbbed all over. I let Storm walk at his own pace for a bit, and then, when we came to a path that looked as though it led back toward the manor, I eased him onto it. I didn’t see the snake until Storm reared up and nearly tossed me from the saddle again.
I haven’t the faintest idea what sort of snake it was. It was no adder, I believe, and it was perfectly harmless, and far more terrified than I.
But not more terrified than Storm. His forelegs came pounding down and he thrust his head forward and bolted up the path, muscles pumping, hooves thudding. The reins slipped from my grasp. I was only barely holding on, one arm around his wide slick neck, the other groping frantically for the reins, when we burst from dimness into sunshine and green. I realized that we were on the pathway that circled Maplewhite; and, just then, finally, I managed to snag the reins.
When I had the horse under control again, I discovered that my return to civilization had not been effected in altogether the privacy I should have preferred. Ahead of me, in an excited group by the side of the pathway, beneath a big copper beech, were Lord Purleigh, Mrs Corneille, Mr Houdini, and Mr Beaumont. And, of course, the Allardyce.
As soon as I was near enough, they all began to hurl questions at me. I couldn’t find my voice, Evy. I could only stare at them, hopelessly, and mumble.
And then, off to my left, there was a bright quick flicker of light, and a sharp explosive crack. I believed-in a kind of delirium, I suppose-that my two ghosts had stalked me all this way, followed me back to the manor, and that now they were shooting at me. And so, with the quickness of mind common to all gothic heroines, I fainted dead away.
Enough for now. My hand is cramping. I’ll post this and I’ll write again, later.
All my love, Jane
Chapter Thirteen
Doyle crossed his right leg over his left knee, and again a small wince flickered quickly across his lips. He puffed once more at his pipe and then took it from his mouth. “To begin with,” he said, “I think that in these matters we should defer to Mr. Beaumont s expertise. He is, after all, the professional here. I am merely an amateur, a simple scribbler.”
“Come, come,” said Lord Bob, sitting back. “Don’t be modest, old man. Whole country knows how you saved that Hindu fellow’s life. Nuralji, Moralji, whatever.” He turned to the Great Man. “Poor devil was arrested for maiming some animals. Cattle, dreadful thing, all the locals in an uproar. Shropshire, this was. Bloody police needed a scapegoat, ran this fellow in, no real evidence. Bloody court convicted him. Typical capitalist cockup. Then Doyle got onto it. Sniffing about. Just like that Sherlock Holmes chappie of his, eh? Deductions right and left. Digging up clues and whatnot. Proved the fellow innocent. Got him released, eh, Doyle?”
Doyle looked over at me and smiled sadly. “I’m afraid that Lord Purleigh overstates both my efforts and their results. By the time I took an interest in his case, George Edjali had already been pardoned and released. He was completely innocent, of that I had no doubt. But I was far from being the only one who felt so. I merely attempted to persuade our Home Office that his conviction should be quashed, and that he should be paid some compensation for having been unjustly imprisoned for three years.’
He put the pipe back in his mouth. “Unfortunately,” he said, puffing smoke, “I was unsuccessful.”
“No surprise there,” said Lord Bob. “Typical capitalist bureaucracy, eh? Protecting themselves and their lackeys. Gutless swine, the lot of ’em. Still, you’re the one found the evidence. Saw the proper direction to take, eh? That’s what we need here, Doyle. Bit of direction. Be grateful for it, don’t mind telling you. Crazed magicians, assassins, not my thing at all.”
Doyle smiled and puffed again at his pipe. “But neither, really, are they mine. As I say, this is Mr. Beaumont’s parish. And I must admit, Lord Purleigh, that I believe he’s entirely justified in insisting upon informing the
