Lostwithiel I took the road to Treesmill, so that I could have a closer view of the farms situated on the opposite side of the valley from the railway. Strickstenton was on the left-hand side of the narrow road, and, from the brief glimpse I had from the car, of considerable age, and what a tourist brochure would describe as picturesque. The pasture land belonging to it sloped downwards to a wood.
Once I was out of sight of the house I got out of the car and looked across to the railway on the other side of the valley. The tunnel showed up plainly, and even as I watched a train emerged like a straggling snake, yellow- headed, evil, and wound its way below Treverran Farm and disappeared down to the lower valley. The goods train that had killed Magnus had appeared from the opposite direction, climbing the rising ground and vanishing into the tunnel, a reptile seeking cover in the underworld, as Magnus, who had neither seen nor heard it, dragged himself dying to the hut above. I drove on down the twisting lane, noting on my left the turning which, I judged, led past Colwith Farm to the bottom of the valley and what remained of the original river stream. At some time, before the railway cut into the land, there would have been a track leading from Great Treverran across the valley to its smaller neighbour, Little Treverran.
Either farm might be the Tregest of the Carminowes. I went on down to Treesmill, and up the hill to the call-box in Tywardreath. I dialled the Kilmarth number, and Vita answered.
'Darling,' I said, 'it seems rather rude to leave Dench and Willis on their own in Liskeard, so I think I'll hang around until they have finished with the police, and then have dinner with them.'
'Oh well,' she said, 'if you must. But don't be late. No need to wait for the train.'
'Probably not,' I told her. 'It depends how much there is to discuss.'
'All right. I'll expect you when I see you.'
I rang off, and returned to the car. Then I drove back again to Treesmill and up the twisting lane, and this time took the turning that led to Colwith. The lane went on, past the farm, as I had thought it would, becoming steeper, and finally petered out in a small water-splash at the bottom of the hill. To the left, across a cattle-grid, was a narrow entrance to Little Treverran. The buildings themselves were out of sight, but a board with lettering on it said: W.P. Kelly. Woodworker.
I risked the water-splash and parked the car, out of sight of the lane, in the field beyond, close to a line of trees and only a few hundred yards from the railway.
I looked at my watch. It was a little after five. I opened the boot of the car and took out the walking-stick, which I had primed, in the dressing-room, with the last of bottle A, before showing it to John Willis in the library.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IT WAS SNOWING. The soft flakes fell upon my head and my hands, and the world all about me was suddenly white, no lush green summer grass, no line of trees, and the snow fell steadily, blotting the hills from sight. There were no farm-buildings anywhere near me — nothing but the black river, about twenty foot broad where I was standing, and the snow, which had drifted high on either bank, only to slither into the water as the mass caved in from the weight, revealing the muddied earth beneath. It was bitter cold; not the swift, cutting blast that sweeps across high ground, but the dank chill of a valley where winter sunshine does not penetrate, nor cleansing wind. The silence was the more deadly, for the river rippled past me without sound, and the stunted willows and alder growing beside it looked like mutes with outstretched arms, grotesquely shapeless because of the burden of snow they bore upon their limbs. And all the while the soft flakes fell, descending from a pall of sky that merged with the white land beneath.
My mind, usually clear when I had taken the drug, was stupefied, baffled; I had expected something akin to the autumn day that I remembered from the previous time, when Bodrugan had been drowned, and Roger carried the dripping body in his arms towards Isolda. Now I was alone, without a guide; only the river at my feet told me I was in the valley. I followed its course upstream, groping like a blind man, knowing by instinct that if I kept the river on my left I must be moving north, and that somewhere the strip of water would narrow, the banks would close, and I should find a bridge or ford to take me to the other side. I had never felt more helpless or lost. Time, in this other world, had hitherto been calculated by the height of the sun in the sky, or, as when I traversed the Lampetho valley at night, by the stars overhead; but now, in this silence and beneath the falling snow, there was no means of gauging whether it was morning or afternoon. I was lost, not in the present, with familiar landmarks close at hand, the reassuring presence of the car, but in the past.
The first sound broke the silence, a splash in the river ahead, and moving swiftly I saw an otter dive from the further bank and swim his way upstream. As he did so a dog followed him, and then a second, and immediately there were some half-dozen of them yelping and crying at the river's brink, splashing their way into the water in chase of the otter. Someone shouted, the shout taken up by another, and a group of men came running towards the river through the falling snow, shouting, laughing, encouraging the dogs, and I saw they were coming from a belt of trees just beyond me, where the river curved. Two of them scrambled down the bank into the water, thrashing it with their sticks, and a third, holding a long whip, cracked it in the alr, stinging the ear of one of the dogs still crouching on the bank, which plunged after its companions.
I drew nearer, to watch them, and saw how the river narrowed a hundred yards or so beyond, while on the left, at the entrance to a copse of trees, the land fell away and the stream formed a sheet of water like a miniature lake, a film of ice upon its surface. Somehow the men and the dogs, between them, drove the hunted otter into the gulley that fed the lake, and in a moment they were upon him, the dogs crying, the men thrashing with their sticks. The dogs floundered as the ice cracked, the surface crimsoned, and blood spattered the film of white above black water as the otter, seized between snapping jaws, was dragged from the hole he sought, and torn to pieces where the ice held firm. The lake can have held little depth, for the men, hallooing and calling to the dogs, strode forward on to it, careless of the crack appearing suddenly from one end to the other. Foremost among them was the man with the long whip, who stood out from his fellows because of his height, and his dress as well, a padded surcoat buttoned to the throat and a high beaver hat upon his head, shaped like a cone. 'Drive them clear,' he shouted, to the bank on the further side. 'I'd as soon lose the lot of you as one of these,' and bending suddenly, amongst the pack of yelping hounds, he lifted what remained of the otter from the midst of them and flung it across the lake to the snow-covered verge. The dogs, baulked of their prey, struggled and slid across the ice to retrieve it where it now lay, while the men, less nimble than the animals, and hampered by their clothing, floundered and splashed in the breaking ice, shouting, cursing, jerkins and hoods caked white with the falling snowflakes.
The scene was part brutal, part macabre, for the man with the conical hat, once he knew his hounds were safe, turned his attention, laughing, to his companions in misfortune. While he himself was wet now to the thigh, he at least had boots to protect his feet, while his attendants, as I supposed they were, had some of them lost their shoes when the ice broke, and were thrashing about with frozen hands in useless search of them. Their master, laughing still, regained the bank, and, lifting his conical hat a moment, shook the snowflakes clear before replacing it once more. I recognised the ruddy face and the long jaw, although he was some twenty feet away. It was Oliver Carminowe. He was staring hard in my direction, and although reason told me he could not see me, and I had no part in his world, the way he stood there, motionless, his head turned towards me, disregarding his grumbling attendants, gave me a strange feeling of unease, almost of fear. 'If you want to have speech with me, come across and say so,' he called suddenly. The shock of what I thought discovery sent me forward to the lake's edge, and then, with relief I saw Roger standing beside me to become, as it were, my spokesman and my cover. How long he had been there I did not know. He must have walked behind me along the river bank.
'Greetings to you, Sir Oliver!' he cried. 'The drifts are shoulder-high above Treesmill, and your side of the valley too, so Rob Rosgof's widow told me at the ferry. I wondered how you fared, and the lady Isolda too.'
'We fare well enough,' answered the other, 'with food enough to last a siege of several weeks, which God forbid. The wind may change within a day or two and bring us rain. Then, if the road does not flood, we shall leave for Carminowe. As to my lady, she stays in her chamber half the day sulking, and gives me little of her company.' He spoke contemptuously, watching Roger all the while, who moved nearer to the river bank. 'Whether she follows me to Carminowe is her concern,' he continued. 'My daughters are obedient to my will, if she is not. Joanna is already promised to John Petyt of Ardeva, and, although a child still, prinks and preens before the glass as if she were already a bride of fourteen years and ripe for her strapping husband. You may tell her godmother Lady
