I left the car at the roadside, called at a cottage for the key and the candle which were kept there — nobody was in, but the key, the candle and a box of matches were there for the borrowing — then I made my way on foot to the long barrow known locally as Hetty Pegler’s Tump.
This involved a walk on a rough but well-trodden path alongside a big field. The path was bordered by bushes on the right-hand side, but my objective was straight ahead of me and could not be missed. I went up to it, carrying my candle, matches and the key, and looked doubtfully at the very low wooden doorway with which the Ministry of Works had replaced the original neolithic stone portal, and decided not to make use of the key after all.
My shoes were already muddy and almost soaked through, and I could see no way of insinuating myself into the tomb without getting my clothes covered in mud, for to get inside the long barrow involved, so far as I could determine, crawling in on hands and knees.
However, the view from Hetty Pegler was well worth the visit. Like other long barrows — I am thinking particularly of Belas Knap on Cleeve Cloud — Hetty Pegler’s Tump was high up and furnished the widest possible views except those gained from an aeroplane. Particularly there was the gleam of silver which I knew was the Severn and I could even make out the Welsh mountains on the other side of it, and, nearer at hand, the dips and slopes and autumn colouring of the wolds.
I returned the key, candle and matches and drove back to Beeches Lawn by a hilly, wooded road which writhed about, but took me to the railway station and so home. We dined earlier than usual that evening. I was missing the other guests, but it was what people call ‘a good miss’. I am not a very sociable man, preferring, as I do, my own company to that of others. In this case, moreover, none of the house-party, with the exception of Dame Beatrice, had appealed to me much, although I would have made an exception in favour of Marigold Coberley. However, her husband had guarded her with such a jealous eye that it was difficult even to get speech with her, let alone the tete-a-tete I would have liked.
After dinner Anthony said he had a vestry meeting and left us. Celia refused to have the drawing-room curtains drawn, although those in the dining-room had been closed. She said there would be what she called ‘a stormy sunset’ and she wanted to enjoy it. The drawing-room was exceptionally large. It had a huge bay window with china cabinets built in on either side and in the same wall there was a glass-topped door which opened on to the path round the lawn. On one side of the fireplace there were shelves for bric-a-brac and on the other side there was another window from which the copper beech tree dominated the outlook. I stood at this window and thought how pleasant domesticity could be.
There was a long ridge of low-lying cloud behind the hills and the evening light which came in through the big bay window to my right threw lurid colour from the setting sun on to the further wall. Celia wanted to go up on to the roof to get a fuller view of the sunset, but I demurred at first. It would be chilly up there, I said, and, after the rain, the leads would be slippery and could be dangerous. I reminded her of Marigold’s accident.
However, she insisted, so we put on wraps, climbed the stairs and went along a passage to where a trap-door and a loft ladder could take us on to the flat part of the roof.
‘Hullo,’ said Celia, when we had emerged. ‘Where’s all that smoke coming from? Something must be on fire.’
‘Perhaps your gardener is having his bonfire without waiting for our help,’ I said.
‘Nonsense, Corin! It’s the old house!’
It was fortunate that the town was so near. The fire brigade reached us in a matter of minutes. I left Celia in the house and went along to see the conflagration. The old house was a mass of flames. There was billowing smoke and crackling wood and, although the fire brigade soon had the situation under control, the damage was done and where the old house had stood there soon remained nothing but a charred mess of burnt wood deluged with water and the grim skeleton of blackened walls.
‘So much for that,’ said Celia, when I told her, but there was more, far more, to come.
‘Was the property insured?’ I asked Anthony when he returned to the house. He said that it was, but only the fabric itself, as any furniture had been moved out long ago.
‘What I can’t make out,’ he went on, ‘is how the fire started, especially after all the rain we’ve had.’
‘Hooligans. Probably the same gang as were responsible for Mrs Coberley’s accident, don’t you think?’
‘If so, it’s a police matter. I shall see to it that every enquiry is made. An empty house does not go up in flames because of internal combustion.’
‘I suppose — I mean, Miss Brockworth did tell us that she had met Miss Mundy in there,’ I said tentatively.
‘Oh, Aunt Eglantine will say anything which comes into her head. She is not to be relied on. I’m sure Gloria was far enough away before Aunt climbed into the house and had her accident when the staircase collapsed. The old nuisance has a bee in her bonnet. She didn’t meet the girl there. All the same, the house must have been set on fire deliberately and I’m going to find out who did it. It was just a piece of wanton destruction on a par with all the other lawless, senseless behaviour which goes on nowadays, and somehow it’s got to be stopped.’
‘Easier said than done,’ I remarked. ‘In these cases of wilful damage by louts the police seem to be helpless.’
However, they were not so helpless as to ignore a most grievous occurrence which was the aftermath of the fire. What hit us next day was the appalling news that a body had been found among the charred embers of the old house.
The news was brought by the gardener. He came up to the house early next morning and asked to see Anthony. Anthony was busy. He was one of the churchwardens of a church in the town and he and his companion- in-office had planned to go over the church accounts before they submitted them to the usual auditors, so he told the maid who came with the message to refer the gardener to Celia.
I knew about this because I was with Celia at the time. We were in the little garden room to which he already had brought some fine hothouse chrysanthemums for the vases. I was stripping the lower leaves from the tall, woody stems and getting in some gentle tapping on them with a light hammer, and she was doing the flower arrangements. The gardener, who had been kept at the back door while the maid apprised Anthony of his arrival, was shown into the garden room on Anthony’s orders.
‘I’m sorry, mum,’ he said, twisting his tweed hat in his enormous hands, ‘but I aimed to have spoke to the master.’
‘He is too busy to see you, Platt. What do you want?’
