‘Will the little museum be open today?’ she asked.
‘Oh, no. It only opens on Sundays. That is the only day Mr Piercey has to spare,’ she was told. ‘All the same, if you want to visit it, I daresay Mrs Piercey is at home and will let you have the key-that’s if Lady Bitton-Bittadon remembered to hand it back. She was the last person to borrow it, I believe.’
‘Lady Bitton-Bittadon?’
‘Poor Sir Bathy’s wife,’ they said in unison.
‘Oh, I see. I suppose the funeral accounts for the fact that the village seems very quiet for May-Day,’ said Fenella.
‘Well, all the men are at work,’ said the shopkeeper.
‘At work? Oh, of course! I wondered why there were so few people about. I was thinking it was Saturday, but it’s only Thursday, isn’t it?’ said Fenella.
‘The farm-workers will be let off at twelve today, and the others will take the afternoon off, with or without permission,’ said the woman confidently. ‘On this particular Mayering, permission will certainly be given, because the excuse will be Sir Bathy’s funeral.’
‘Oh, yes, I see.’ Fenella thanked the sisters and asked when they would be taking up their sibylline duties.
‘We leave here just before two p.m.,’ they told her. ‘It can’t be earlier, because of the dinner-hour. People must eat, and funerals always seem to make them hungrier.’
The house to which Fenella had been directed was so near the church that she thought she would pay that another visit by way of the lych-gate before she asked about being admitted to the museum. She stopped again to admire the ancient gate. It was of arch-brace and king-post construction and to the king-post somebody had tied a wilting bunch of cowslips, in honour, no doubt, of the Mayering.
She entered the church. It seemed lighter than it had been on the previous afternoon and she noticed that there were graffiti on the bases of three of the pillars. On one there was scratched a crude elevation of what she took to be the original church, for the chevron mouldings on the door and window frames were clearly shown, and the squat Norman tower bore no resemblance to the tower of the church in which she stood.
On the second pillar there was lettering. She took the new torch out of her handbag and switched it on. The wording on the pillar was a reference to the Black Death of 1350, from which the village had suffered badly. The third pillar was rather different. Cut deeply into it, under the date MDCCC, were the unexpected and ominous words: What Makes the Devils Smile?
‘Well, I should think it might be the impropriety of removing people’s bones from the crypt of a church and burying them on a pagan hilltop,’ muttered Fenella. She returned to the churchyard and the lych-gate and then followed the directions the sisters had given her for finding the curator’s cottage.
The woman who opened the door to her made no difficulty about letting her have the key.
‘Not as you’ll find much to interest you, I don’t suppose,’ she said. ‘A lot of old junk, if you ask me my opinion. Still, squire allus give us a five pound note each Mayerin’ for keepin’ it dusted and havin’ charge o’ the key – not as I reckon us’ll get any perks this May-Day, for she won’t think to give us nothing, and Mr Jeremy, as might, well, he won’t be comin’ to the Mayerin’, seein’ as he’s away in foreign parts and don’t even know, most like, as his poor father’s lyin’ in state and is to be buried today, more’s the pity.’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Fenella, although she felt she had already had the answer from Clytie.
‘Spoils the Mayerin’. Stands to reason that will. A funeral’s well enough when there’s nothen else to hand, but when folks fare to enjoy themselves, why, then, a funeral’s out of place, it seem to me.’
‘I heard a rumour – I suppose it isn’t true – that Sir Bathy was murdered.’
‘Well, there was inquest, and brought in as person or persons unknown, so that mean murder, don’t it? But you be a stranger in our midst. What do you know about it?’
‘As I said, I heard a rumour.’
‘Rumours is mostly lies, but this one wasn’t. Funny thing. Everybody liked squire, which is more nor I can say for ’is lady.’
‘Isn’t she popular in the village?’
‘Us never hardly set eyes on her. Fair tooken aback, I was, when she come here to borrow museum key. Squire’s second wife. They do say as Mr Jeremy went to India to get shut of her for a bit. No love lost there, by all accounts – or else the reverse, so tongues wag. Myself, I wouldn’t know the rights and wrongs of it. Of course, her’s a good deal younger nor Squire was, though older by ten years than Mr Jeremy, I’d say.’
‘Mr Jeremy is the son?’
‘Ah. I suppose he’d ought to be called Sir Jeremy now.’
‘Oh, it’s a baronetcy, is it?’
‘I dunno what that is, nor whether Sir Bathy was really entitled, him not bein’ in the direct line, as you might say, bein’ brother, not son, to old squire. Ah, well, at any rate, grave will have to be opened up for Sir Bathy, and that’ll make a bit of a change after the last two or three of the family bein’ killed in foreign parts.’
Fenella accepted the key to the small medieval building which housed the collection, but soon decided that from her point of view it scarcely repaid a visit except as a means of using up some of the time she had to spare. The exhibits could be matched in any folk-museum in the country and were not even particularly good specimens of their kind. Many of them were old-fashioned kitchen utensils
