The Dancing Druids

inhabitants of this island had the name for being cannibals?’

‘In a strictly religious sense, of course,’ said Laura. ‘You don’t mean that the people who murdered this heavy man were cannibals, do you? Because, if so, I’m dashed if I’m coming with you. I don’t mind the risk of being killed, but I’m jolly well not going to be eaten. Of course,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘it would tend to solve a murderer’s chief difficulty, wouldn’t it? I never thought of that before.’

‘It would only do so if the murderer had the attributes and appurtenances of the elderly gentleman in Through the Looking Glass, child.’

‘Eh? Oh, you mean Old Father William?’

‘Yes. He finished the goose with the bones and the beak… Ah, well, let us see what cook has done about lunch.’

‘I’m not sure that I’m hungry,’ said Laura.

Chapter Five

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‘All the day long she flew about in the form of an owl, or crept about the country like a cat, but at night she always became an old woman again.’

Ibid. (Jorinda and Jorindel)

« ^ »

Mrs. Bradley had one characteristic in particular which her young and lively secretary was child enough to appreciate. It was that when she planned a thing the plan was carried out without delay. Too many older people, Laura Menzies had always thought, put forth fascinating ideas and made rash and delightful promises, only to drive their youthful protegees demented by loitering, gossiping, or remembering duties which had to be performed, until the dust and ashes of frustration and disappointment completely covered the bright gold of the pleasure in store.

Mrs. Bradley was free from this regrettable fault. When she planned an outing it ‘stayed planned’ as Laura had once gratefully and inaccurately observed. Therefore it was with pleasant feelings of excitement and interest that Laura ordered the car after lunch, convinced that when Mrs. Bradley said ‘five to two on the gravel,’ she meant just that.

At five to two, therefore, Mrs. Bradley’s car appeared at the front of the house, and by two o’clock Mrs. Bradley, accompanied by Laura, and with the chauffeur, George, at the wheel, was out on the Cuchester Road.

‘We are not going quite as far as the farm in this,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Some of our investigations would be better conducted on foot. Have you brought the map?’

‘Yes, of course. I’ve also brought your revolver.’

‘Tut, child. It’s daylight, and we shall be home before dark.’

‘I feel safer with it,’ said Laura doggedly. ‘I don’t like all these corpses and hot-water bottles. Besides, I’m a pretty good shot, and I wouldn’t mind trying my skill. So if any ugly blighters come into my line of vision I shall know what to do, that’s all. One can always plead self-defence.’

She stretched out her five foot ten of abundant muscle, bone and firm flesh, and grinned contentedly.

The car, travelling south and a point towards the east, came opposite the Early Iron Age fortress from whose mighty battlements O’Hara had tried to follow the movements of Gascoigne the hare.

‘And now,’ said Mrs. Bradley, as George pulled up on the turf, ‘George shall take the car round to where Mr. O’Hara says that he met this man who directed him wrongly, and we will pick up the car again when we have followed the route which Mr. O’Hara says he took before he met with this man.’

‘Ah, checking up on O’Hara’s story,’ said Laura, approvingly. ‘Intelligent, if I may say so. And I’d like to say that we ought to check Gascoigne’s, too.’

‘You may say what you please, child,’ said Mrs Bradley with her usual good-humour. ‘Those are, I should say, the obvious things for us to do.’

‘Yes, we must explore all avenues,’ agreed Laura. ‘You know, I feel I’m going to enjoy this business. There’s a smack of Edgar Allan Poe about it which rather appeals to my sense of the bizarre and the macabre.’

‘I didn’t know you had one,’ said her employer. Laura grinned, and then added, with her usual cheerfulness :

‘Anyway, it’s a grand afternoon and it’s glorious country, and I like to have something to do. Somewhere to aim for, I mean. I say, though, it’s steep up here! And talk about the wind on the heath!’

They avoided, however, the steepest and shortest slope, and followed the rough path which ended in a wooden gate beside which was a notice. This proved to be indecipherable, so, unable to take advantage of any warning or invitation it might once have conveyed, they opened the gate and passed through.

To their left a narrow track led them up to the entrance of the fortress, two great banks of earth, turfed over now, but reinforced underneath with enormous blocks of hewn stone.

‘We must come here again,’ said Laura, as they mounted a high bank and began to circumambulate the citadel. They were moving to their left, round the northern circuit of the embankments, past a ditch which was fifty feet deep. To their left stretched the fields and lay the sheepfolds of a lesser and more homely civilization. Farther off was a symmetrical round barrow, and in front of them, everywhere that they faced, were hills, but hills higher and kindlier than the shadowed and doom-laden mound on which they stood.

‘By Jove, you know, it makes you think,’ said Laura.

‘This way, I think,’ said Mrs. Bradley. She crossed a bridge of earth at the western end of the ditch. Laura followed, and soon they had cut through the middle of the inner sanctuary of the fortress. They passed the ruins of a Roman temple, by-passed the heights on which the cattle of the Iron Age had pastured in time of war, and regained the track which ringed the fortress. Soon they were in the ditch where O’Hara had turned his ankle. From this they reached the sandy lane where O’Hara had been stopped by the man in the car.

‘Well, O’Hara told the truth so far, wouldn’t you say?’ enquired Laura, leaning against a gate. ‘And there’s George. Geo—orge!’

She waved, and George drove towards them.

‘There has certainly been a car up here, madam,’ he said, ‘and only one. I made a sketch of the tyre-tracks in case you should want to identify them anywhere else.’

‘Excellent, George,’ said Mrs. Bradley, handing him back his drawing. ‘And very useful. Miss Menzies and I are going to continue our walk. You have directions for finding the farm. You had better keep about half a mile away from it, or, if anything, rather more. You don’t want to seem interested in it in any way whatsoever. There are plenty of things to admire. Be careful to excite no suspicion.’

‘Very good, madam.’ He reversed the car towards the main road, and turned it expertly at a gateway.

‘Now, then,’ said Laura, ‘on we go! Come on, and I’ll walk your legs off!’

‘Done!’ said Mrs. Bradley, accepting the challenge in deed as well as in word. She set such a cracking pace up the sandy lane that even Laura, always in training, had to lengthen an already Amazonian stride in order to keep up with her.

The countryside was delightful, and Laura enjoying the prospect of bluish downs, the green of the sloping fields and the miles of open country, had forgotten the object of the walk until the road began to darken and they found themselves passing a strange house with an inhospitable legend.

‘Keep out,’ said Laura, slowing up and reading aloud these unsociable words. ‘I wonder where the old chap has gone with the barrow? You know, this place looks a bit like a lunatic asylum to me. One of those grim places you read about in Victorian novels. What do you think?’

‘I don’t think at all at present. I merely observe and note,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘This is undoubtedly the Elizabethan manor which has the four dead trees in the park, for, as we turn the corner, there they are! Mr. O’Hara has not, so far, misled us.’ Her tone expressed something more than satisfaction.

‘It is a queer-looking place,’ said Laura, gazing in fascination at the trees. ‘How did that notice affect you, by the way? Personally, I have an almost uncontrollable desire to turn in my tracks and Go In.’

‘We have not much time to spare,’ said Mrs. Bradley, setting out briskly again. Soon they had left the grim