believe that he picks her out as the special recipient of his shafts of wit. Mr. Miller, although you may not be aware of the fact, madam, has a good-natured way of appearing to address himself to the more hysterical female portion of his audience in order to rally and admonish them. This my mother greatly appreciates.’
‘Why does she want you with her?’
‘Well, madam, she does not follow all the more modern references, but she keeps them in mind and I am in request to explain them to her as soon as the performance is over.’
‘Isn’t that rather difficult?’
‘I should select the adjective “embarrassing,” madam. It is not always an enviable task to explain Mr. Miller’s more Athenian epigrams in a crowded Underground train.’
In London Mrs. Bradley made a lightning round of visits and an important telephone call. Her visits, in chronological order, were to her son in his chambers, to the British Museum, to the London Library, to the geological section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and to a famous archaeologist of her acquaintance. She then rang up O’Hara.
‘I am exceedingly grateful to you for introducing me to a most fascinating affair,’ she said. ‘I have interviewed my son, and also the Chief Constable, and you need have no fear of being arrested as an accessory after the fact of murder. It is not certain yet, in fact, that a murder has been committed. However, the affair is now in the hands of the Chief Constable and the County Police. From time to time I will let you know what progress, if any at all, is made in the enquiry… You would like to help if help is required?… and your cousin, too? Excellent!’
‘Are they still interested?’ asked Laura, who was in the room during the conversation over the telephone.
‘Oh, yes, I think so. And now I must set to work, child.’
‘Golly! What on earth have you been doing all day, then?’
Mrs. Bradley grinned.
‘I think I must study George’s reports with relation to the Ordnance Survey, child. Then, to-morrow I think I shall visit the scenes of these disappearances. It will be very interesting to compare them.’
‘May I come with you?’
‘1 should not think of going without you.’
‘You do think these people have been murdered, don’t you? We ought to try to trace what connection they have with one another, oughtn’t we?’
‘Your acumen is only matched by your innocent assumption that a theory is as good as a fact,’ said Mrs. Bradley, poking her secretary in the ribs.
‘Well, one must begin somewhere,’ argued Laura, ‘and lots of theories are preferable to facts—notably that the human race has progressed since Neolithic times and that England is a Christian country. Besides, theories, as it were, should be based upon facts in much the same way as a desirable residence rests upon its foundations.’ She squinted complacently down her nose as she put forward these striking premises.
‘Nevertheless, as you rightly point out, the foundations have to come first and must be of solid construction,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘So far, we have no reason for assuming that there is anything to connect the disappearances of three widely-separated persons except for the interesting (but not necessarily significant) fact that an interval of, roughly, nine years elapsed between disappearances one and two, two and three, and, now, between three and four.’
‘Well, anyway, let’s get hold of a map, and see if we can deduce where this fat blighter came from,’ said Laura. ‘Once we know that, we know all.’
‘How so?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired.
‘Well, we’ve only to question the local inhabitants to arrive at a complete history. You know what villages are. And once we know why we know who. Isn’t that so?’
‘Sometimes,’ Mrs. Bradley cautiously replied. ‘But, even if the villagers tell us all they know… which it is not very likely that they will, as we are strangers… I am not at all sure that we shall be so very much further forward. You see, the lonely situation of these houses from which the men seem to have disappeared, makes it unlikely that any of the villagers knew anything of the disappearances until some time after these had occurred. And the time factor in such cases is often of great importance.’
‘Oh,’ said Laura, somewhat dashed by this elementary reasoning, ‘I see what you mean. Still, it won’t do any harm to pore over the map for a bit. Will you do the poring, or shall I?’
‘Oh, you do it, child.’
‘Right. Thanks. I like mucking about with maps. Now I shall want… let’s see… yes, I’d better have a transparent ruler, a protractor, compasses, a piece of thread marked in inches to wriggle along the winding roads and rivers, dividers, a set-square, some little flags stuck on pins…’ She went happily to work to collect these, pausing only to add, ‘And we ought to include Little Dorsett, I suppose, as we’ve had two references to it. Isn’t that where that woman at the farm said she came from? And if the Allwrights are living there as well…’
‘We must certainly include Little Dorsett,’ Mrs. Bradley agreed.
Chapter Seven
—«¦»—
‘
Ibid. (
« ^ »
Once she had assembled her tools, Laura went to work, and some simple measurements and a complicated table of statistics produced satisfactory results. Laura, at any rate, was pleased with them, and at ten-thirty made known her findings.
‘What do you think?’ she demanded, looking up from her self-imposed task of twiddling a pair of compasses on the middle of the one-inch map. ‘Significant, I should call it, shouldn’t you?’
‘I hardly know,’ replied Mrs. Bradley. ‘Should I?’
‘Rather! You wait until I tell you!… Oh, there’s one thing I want to do, by the way, before we third-degree any villagers, and that is to go to that circle of standing stones above the farmyard. When can we go?’
‘To-morrow morning, if you wish, child.’
‘Oh, good! It had better be as early as possible, then, I think. We must leave plenty of time to do the villages properly after breakfast. What about leaving here at five for the circle of stones?’
‘As you wish,’ said Mrs. Bradley, grinning. ‘I will call you myself.’
She did this at four, and by five they were in the car with Laura driving. It was a clear grey morning with no hint of autumn in the air and not a great deal in the trees. Study of the map had taught Laura, in addition to other matters, that it was possible to drive to within three-quarters of a mile of the circle of standing stones without going past O’Hara’s mysterious farm.
The woods around the house where they were staying gave place very soon to the main road to Cuchester. Laura turned off from this about a mile to the south of the first village through which it ran, and the car mounted a long hill before it entered a narrow belt of trees on the further side.
After this the road became open, treeless and straight, and then, to avoid a high hill which was crowned by a Neolithic fort known locally as Mabb’s Mound, it took itself off southeast, but still in a line as straight as a ruler could have made, past a farm, a long barrow, and a road which petered out up a hill and ended in moorland at the top.
Soon the car found another high-road, and, by keeping to this for some miles, Laura passed through a long and beautiful village, skirted the park of a large house surrounded by trees, dropped cautiously down the steepest gradient in the county, and by-passed the town of Cuchester.
Three or four miles beyond Cuchester she made the detour which would bring her round to the west of O’Hara’s farm, and, beyond the discovery that the road had a very loose surface and in places was only fit for a sheep walk, she learned nothing that she had not known before.
She parked the car in a gateway on to a field, and then she and Mrs. Bradley set out for the circle of stones. A footpath which was crossed by two stiles led up and over the hill, for the stones were not quite at the
