seen Mr Ward. I reckon we've got at least a couple of hours.'
'We haven't, you know,' I said. 'Sunday school comes out at eleven to be ready for church. We'll be expected home.'
'We can say we went for a walk.'
'What! When Uncle Arthur thinks we went straight home when he left us?'
'Oh, well, perhaps we'd better just hang about until Sunday school comes out, then, and look in on Aunt Kirstie just to get ourselves identified and then we can go off again. She'll be too busy with the Sunday roast to bother about what we're up to, and dinner isn't on the table until half-past one, so how about that?'
'How will we know when Sunday school is over?'
'We'll have to get back there and join the others as they come out.'
'Suppose we're spotted getting there?'
'We won't be. All we've got to do is nip past Polly's stable, get through the fence, nip through the hermit's cottage and sneak past Mrs Honour's.'
'That's if there's nobody in the cottage. Suppose Mr Ward is in there again! And it's such a mess!'
'Have to chance it. Come on,' said Kenneth, 'and look out for that frock of yours. We don't want questions asked about damage to Sunday clothes.'
'Just the reason I said before. I don't want to go to that cottage,' I said. 'It's so filthy.'
'Suit yourself. I'll go alone, then, and come back here and give you the tip when Sunday school is out.'
But this was too much for my elder-sisterly pride.
'Oh, come on, then,' I said crossly and, without another word, we made our way past the stable and squeezed through between the widened bars in the hermit's backyard fence.
We stood a moment, listening, but there was not a sound in the weedy, overgrown garden, not a bird- note, not even a scurrying rat. The silence, indeed, was uncanny and I think we both felt we ought not to break it. It was an enchantment, but an uncomfortable one. I remember thinking of a ghost-story I had read where the most sinister ghosts were not confined to the hours of darkness, but stalked the earth, tall and terrible as the Host of the Sidh, at noonday at the full zenith of the sun.
There was no wind, either, not so much as the sigh of a zephyr, and my thoughts took another although not a more comforting turn.
'It's like Walter de la Mare,' I said softly, for my class had had an enlightened young teacher the previous term, a student from a London college, who took us once a week for poetry.
'It's like where someone has died,' said Kenneth. 'Let's leave. The place gives me the creeps.'
There was only one major change inside the stinking, grisly little cottage. Somebody had filled in Mr Ward's grave-like hole and stamped the earth flat over it. His pickaxe was leaning up against a filthy wall, but his spade had gone. We heard later that the police had found it at the bottom of the deepest part of the sheepwash.
* * *
No questions were asked regarding Sunday school, but this did not surprise us much. Very little notice was ever taken of our doings so long as we did not get openly into mischief and very little interest was displayed in those things which interested us. This was not owing to negligence, but simply to the fact that, so long as we ate heartily, were what the aunts termed 'biddable' and did not appear to be sickening for anything, our welfare, both physical and spiritual, was taken for granted-a state of affairs which suited everybody, ourselves included.
Sunday dinner-it was roast loin of pork and I was given a chop with a bit of delicious kidney in it-was over at a quarter to three and, as usual, we were sent next door to Aunt Lally to do our Sunday reading of improving literature. As, like Aunt Kirstie and Uncle Arthur, Aunt Lally retired to her bed until Sunday tea-time, we never found much difficulty in slipping out of the house without waking grandfather, whose custom it was to put a large handkerchief over his face and sleep in his armchair until Aunt Lally woke him to give him his tea. When she reappeared she always found us piously perusing the books and pamphlets she had left with us and I will say for her that she never catechised us upon what we were supposed to have read. From her point of view, it was easier not to do so than to involve us in lies or to hear our unpalatable truths. I cannot really believe she thought we had spent the best part of two hours in reading 'How Paul's penny became a pound' or 'Little Meg's Children', let alone the tracts and other moralistic works of which she had such a collection, but she was a simple soul, so perhaps she did think we were as good as I am sure we appeared to be.
On this particular Sunday afternoon we gave her a good quarter of an hour to get settled upstairs and for grandfather to begin his gentle snoring, then we crept down the back stairs to the scullery and left by the back door. We had no fear of encountering Uncle Arthur or Aunt Kirstie. They, too, would have retired upstairs until it was tea-time. It was most grown-ups' invariable custom on Sundays.
As we walked up the hill to the manor house we discussed how best to get hold of Lionel and decided to try the garden first. If he was not there, the next best thing, we thought, would be to knock at the back door and enquire for him, as it would probably be answered by one of the maids, whereas the front door would be opened by the overpowering, supercilious, majestic butler.
As it happened, we were lucky. Lionel was down by the pond chucking stones, of which he appeared to have collected a fair-sized heap from the gravel drive, into the water. He seemed pleased to see us, although he informed us that it might mean saying goodbye, as he was forbidden to go into the village.
'It's this murder,' he said. 'There are policemen up at the house this very minute. They've been here all day questioning people. I don't suppose you know about it yet, but there's been a murder on The Marsh.'
'Of course we know. Everybody knows. But why should police come here?' asked Kenneth. 'Has one of you done the murder?' (Of course he was thinking of Mr Ward.)
'I shouldn't imagine so, but we don't really know. You remember my sister had a birthday party yesterday? Well, one of the guests went out and got herself killed. That's why the police are here,' explained Lionel.
