gibbets of the four dead trees. The woods began to show bluish away to the south, and, at last, Mrs. Bradley leading, she and Laura entered a deep, dark tunnel of trees in a small, silent, circular wood, and were at the farm.
Opposite the ruined cottage Mrs. Bradley stopped, and Laura came up and caught her arm. From a chimney of the farmhouse smoke was coming.
‘I say!’ muttered Laura. ‘I don’t like this very much! Did you expect to find the place occupied, after what those lads told us the other day?’
Mrs. Bradley did not answer, and the two of them moved forward with great caution. They crept up the front garden path and peered in at the window, The room was empty, but flickering flames were being thrown out by a small and lively fire.
‘Well, I don’t know what
Mrs. Bradley drew her enthusiastic secretary away from the window, and they moved quietly round to the side door of the house. This was ajar. To Laura’s surprise, Mrs. Bradley walked in and called loudly:
‘Is anybody about?’
There was the sound of footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs, and an elderly woman came down.
‘Did you want anything?’ she asked.
‘Can you direct us to the nearest garage?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired. ‘We’ve had to leave the car up the road and are strangers to the neighbourhood.’
‘I don’t know whether I can help you,’ replied the woman. ‘How far away is your car?’
‘Oh, a mile or so,’ Mrs. Bradley vaguely replied. ‘Somewhere over there.’ She waved a skinny claw in a north-easterly direction.
‘I’m afraid I can’t help you. I’m only here to air the house. It’s been let because of the film people down at Cottam’s.’
‘Really? Oh, well, thank you.’ Mrs. Bradley touched Laura’s arm. ‘We had better go back and try that other little lane, my dear. I don’t envy you if you’re staying the night here,’ she added, turning to the woman. ‘It seems very lonely, doesn’t it? We happened to see the smoke from your chimney. I am so sorry to have troubled you.’
‘Oh, I don’t live here,’ said the woman. ‘I’m only here to oblige. The gentleman sent a postcard to ask me to air the house. I live at Little Dorsett, over yonder, up the hill. There’s a short cut. It isn’t very far. You could walk it in half an hour. I’ll put you on the road if you like, but I mustn’t be long, else my old man will be shouting after me.’
She took off her apron, hung it on the end of the banisters, smoothed her hair with a working-woman’s blunt- fingered hand, and then went with Laura to the gate.
‘I shall be slower than you will,’ said Mrs. Bradley to the woman, ‘so I’ll follow behind, and meet you as you come back. You go on, Laura, will you?’
Laura nodded intelligently and urged the woman along at a pace which was almost a trot. Mrs. Bradley loitered behind them, and, as soon as they had turned into the wood, she darted back to the house, went in, and hastened into the room in which the fire was burning.
For what purpose it had been lighted she could not determine. There was nothing to show that it had not been lighted to air the house, as the woman had said. There was no sign that documents had been burnt on it. A stout poker lay in the hearth. Thoughtfully impounding this, and holding it in a gloved hand, Mrs. Bradley searched the rest of the house.
It was getting too dark to see much, so, trusting, that no one would see the glow of it, she switched on her torch. There was nothing to be discovered on the ground floor, so she mounted the stairs, retaining the poker as a weapon.
Just as she reached the bedroom described by O’Hara, she thought she heard sounds from below. She opened the door of an enormous built-in cupboard and stepped inside.
‘Nellie!’ cried a man’s voice. ‘Nellie! Where the plague have ee got to, woman?’
Mrs. Bradley awaited with interest the next part of the proceedings. She could hear doors being opened and shut, and, as the footsteps grew fainter and the man went towards the kitchen, she emerged, and, switching on her torch again, made a rapid survey of the floor. Except that, unlike the downstair floors, this one had been scrubbed recently, there was nothing remarkable about it.
The remaining bedrooms were dusty, cobweb-tapestried to an almost incredible degree, unfurnished and undisturbed.
Mrs. Bradley was leaving the last of them when an angry bellow came up the well of the stairs.
‘Oh, there ee be, Nellie, confound ee! Why the devil don’t ee answer when I calls you?’
Mrs. Bradley slipped into the corridor and came on noiseless feet to the head of the stairs. There was a slight recess in the wall. She flattened herself into this and waited for the man to ascend. She still held the poker. She hoped he would not bring a light, but was ready to knock it out of his hand if he did.
He had no torch. She could hear him stumbling up the stairs.
‘Nellie!’ he bellowed. Mrs. Bradley allowed him to walk past her. Then she slid out of her alcove and descended the stairs. She replaced the poker on the hearth from which she had taken it, came out to the side door and ensconced herself in the shadows. She waited. The man came downstairs as soon as he had searched the upstair rooms.
‘Nellie!’ he called desperately. ‘It do be you, don’t it? Answer me, girl! Where be ee?’
Mrs. Bradley let him get half-way down the kitchen passage, and then she gave an eldritch screech of laughter. She heard a startled oath, and then the sound of a panic-stricken voice shouting:
‘Nellie! Nellie! For God’s sake! It do be ’aunted after all! Where
Mrs. Bradley sped down the weed-grown drive and ran for dear life along the lane in the direction the others had taken. Then she slowed down, and, by the time the woman reappeared, Mrs. Bradley was patiently toiling up the long, rutted slope of the hill.
‘She’ve got long legs, your grand-daughter,’ said the woman. ‘But you keep all on up along here, and you’ll pick her up in good time.’
Mrs. Bradley thanked her, and toiled on. Half-way up the hill, Laura emerged with conspiratorial caution from a bush, and, crossing the hill, they made a detour, aided by the map, and reached George and the car without passing the farmhouse again.
‘I’m sorry you had to come so far after us,’ said Laura, ‘but I felt bound to go on a bit after she left me in case she turned round and spotted me, and began to suspect us of something. I was worried about you, though I hope you had time to snoop round? It didn’t seem to take you very long.’
‘I did nicely, thank you, child. The bedroom floor had been scrubbed, as those young men told us. I think I’ll have a word with the County Police when we get back.’
‘Will they think a scrubbed floor enough to go on?’
‘Time will show, child. It is the question of the heavy man’s failure to arrive at the hospital which will interest them. There was a man in the house, by the way. I am reasonably certain that he is the woman’s husband, and that they are there to get the house aired or for some innocent and similar reason. When the new tenants are installed we may be able to find another excuse to call. Meanwhile, there are more profitable fields to explore. Did you get very wet in that hedge?’
‘Soaking,’ said Laura complacently. ‘Did the man in the farmhouse see or hear you?’
‘He both saw me and heard me, child. I gave an eldritch cry, like Tam Lin’s fairy queen, and I am afraid I may have conveyed to him the impression that the house is haunted. It seemed, from what he said, that there is a tale of a ghost. If there is, it might be as well to find out the details. There is scope for many strange things in a house which has the reputation of being haunted.’
‘I’d like to have seen the bloke’s face when you screeched in his ear,’ observed Laura.
‘I did
