The Dancing Druids

days, and the result was not at all gratifying.’

‘You wouldn’t have to buy it if you didn’t like it, you know, although, if you’re rich, I wish you would.’

‘Are you as badly-off as that?’

‘I’m pretty well down to bedrock. But I didn’t mean that. At least, well, yes, I suppose I did. But I think you would like it, you know.’ His manner changed. In a persuasive voice he added, ‘You’ve got lovely bones. It wouldn’t be difficult to flatter you.’

‘You had better paint my secretary,’ said Mrs. Bradley decisively. ‘She has time to spare, and I haven’t. Besides, her young man would like to have a flattering portrait of her, no doubt. Oh, you needn’t look distressed. Laura is well worth painting. I’ll send her round. Mind you’re polite. She is quite capable of felling you to the ground if she finds you irritating. I thought, by the way, that your mother left you some money?’

‘She did, but that brute got through most of it. There was only the house when he went, blast his ugly soul!’

Mrs. Bradley looked searchingly at him.

‘Did you, by any chance, murder your father?’ she asked. To her great interest, Battle looked amused.

‘When I was a little tiny boy?’ he asked mockingly. ‘What do you take me for?’

‘More of a villain than you look!’ said Mrs. Bradley decisively. ‘And more of a liar than you think I do,’ she added in her sardonic, secret thoughts. She did not like the young man.

Chapter Eleven

—«¦»—

‘Who they are that have come to live there I cannot tell, but I am sure it looks more dark and gloomy than ever, and some queer-looking beings are to be seen lurking about it every night, as I am told.’

Ibid. (The Elfin-Grove)

« ^ »

Laura went for her first sitting accompanied by her employer. She went unwillingly and under orders, but regained her good temper when she discovered that Battle was prepared to chat to her whilst he made his preliminary sketch.

‘The thing that stands out a mile,’ she remarked to Mrs. Bradley when they had returned to Slepe Rock, ‘is that this Battle loathed his father with the deep and intense sort of loathing which would very likely lead to murder. And you know what he said when you asked him whether he had murdered him!’

‘Yes. He said he had often thought of it, but that he was no more than a child when his father left him and disappeared. We must admit that he would have been rather young, at the time of his father’s disappearance, to make an effective murderer, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve read of kids murdering people. Morbid kids, and those sort of half-baked ones that nowadays you’d get a psychiatrist to look over.’

‘Even supposing that he did kill his father, do you think that, at the age of eleven or twelve, he could have contrived to hide the body so that the police could never find it?’

‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Well, anyway…’

‘And if he had murdered him and hoodwinked everybody so successfully, would he still hate him quite so fiercely? Would not his attitude be different from what it is? And wouldn’t he have some plausible story to account for his father’s disappearance? He merely states that he hated him and doesn’t want him back.’

‘All right, all right. I withdraw. But he seems quite a murderer to me, but then, of course, I dislike him.’

Mrs. Bradley forbore to contest these unreasonable and unscientific views, chiefly because she agreed with them. She was interested to learn that Laura held them, however, and enquired:

‘What else do you think of him, I wonder?’

‘I don’t think anything. By the way, he wanted to charge me so much an hour for the sittings, but I wasn’t going to agree. I might have to go a dozen times. I believe in piecework from painters.’

‘I heard the conversation, and am also aware that you lent him two pounds,’ said Mrs. Bradley, with a slight but appreciative cackle.

‘Oh, that’s all right, because, if he doesn’t sub up, I shall simply knock it off his bill,’ said Laura hastily.

‘You are prudence and foresight personified. But let us, before we go further, make an inventory of what we know. First, we have two painters and a poet. Three painters, if we count this young Battle. There ought to be something significant about that, as you would say.’

‘All creative artists?’

‘Very well. We have four creative artists, three of whom disappeared without trace. Secondly, we have the odd and possibly significant fact that these disappearances seem to be on a cycle of nine years.’

‘Thirdly,’ said Laura, ‘the disappearances seem to take place nine miles from the place where O’Hara’s fat man was last seen. Fourthly, there seems to be no sort of motive for the disappearances so far as we know at present. Fifthly—is there a fifthly?’

‘There is. You should keep your eyes open and apply your knowledge, child. Fifthly, there are two seventeenth-century carved picture frames in David Battle’s rooms, and there is a wonderful pseudo-Old Crome on the walls of the Cuchester picture dealer.’

‘Painted by David Battle. What about it? And, of course, we shall discover that David’s father disappeared in September because, although I never realized it until now, September is the ninth month of the year! So that would settle it.’

‘And the month is still September, said Mrs. Bradley. ‘I wonder…’

Laura waited a minute, but Mrs. Bradley left the sentence unfinished. Laura decided to prompt her.

‘You wonder what? she said. Mrs. Bradley shook her head.

‘A passing thought, that’s all, child, and quite a foolish one, no doubt.’

‘Don’t be aggravating,’ said Laura. ‘You’re not the only person who dislikes harvest festivals, but I don’t mind mentioning my dislikes.’

At this startling piece of thought-reading Mrs. Bradley cackled loudly. Her secretary grinned.

‘You know, what we ought to do, as I see it at present, is to go to the stone circle every night and hide ourselves, and wait and watch in case the Druids dance. And do you know what I think about that?—I’ve been thinking it over, and I perceive a secret society behind all this, you know.’

‘A what?’ said Mrs. Bradley sharply.

‘Oh,’ said Laura, waving a shapely palm, ‘I’ve been doing a good deal of solid considering since Mike O’Hara and Gerry Gascoigne came to us with that story, and, as I see it, there’s a kidnapping gang at work. The gang is nine strong, operates at nine-yearly intervals, holds some sort of horrid festival in the ninth month of each ninth year, and captures people who live on a nine-mile radius from their centre of operations, which is the nine-stone circle to which O’Hara helped them take that fat man. How else can you work it all out?’

Mrs. Bradley was lost in amazement, and gazed rather anxiously at her secretary.

‘Are you feeling quite well, child?’ she enquired. Laura strode to the hotel window and looked out on to the sea.

‘It’s going to blow,’ she said. She watched the rollers come combing across the bay, and then turned to face her employer. ‘You may laugh,’ she went on, ‘but there’s something behind all this—I know there is!—and we’ve got to work very much quicker. And if those Druids dance I’m jolly well going to see them do it, and then we shall know where we are!’

‘I do beg of you,’ said Mrs. Bradley, looking, this time, genuinely alarmed, ‘not to get into mischief. As I have already pointed out, if your deductions and surmises are correct, we have nearly another nine years in which to solve the problem of these disappearances, and if you are not correct, then idiotic antics among the Druids will not assist the enquiry and may be dangerous. When do you go for your next sitting?’

‘To-morrow,’ said Laura gloomily. ‘I thought you heard me arrange it over the ’phone. Oh, Lord, how I hate being painted!’