‘I’d love her to come,’ said Fenella. ‘May I phone her? That’s such a good idea, and very kind of you, Miriam.’
‘Nonsense, my dear! Glad to see dear old Beatrice at any time. Don’t know how she manages to keep so busy at her age. Remarkable old lady. She, for one, won’t be sorry about this business, you know. I’ve talked to her on the phone about it and she absolutely agrees with me.’
‘Really? She always seemed interested in the thought of my getting married.’
‘Oh, well, we all thought the thing was in the bag, and that you’d made up your mind to go through with it, you see. It wasn’t for us to be jeremiahs about the wedding, was it, now? But, O Lord, my dear, I’m so thankful it’s all off!’
Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley was the great-aunt with whom Fenella had been spending a few days before she began her journey to Douston. Dame Beatrice was surprisingly old, incredibly energetic and was liked by all her relatives except by Fenella’s other great-aunt, the Lady Selina Lestrange, who considered her frivolous.
She was listening to a discourse on Rugby football from her secretary’s son, Hamish Gavin, when she was called to the telephone, and excused herself to him with a promise to return later and hear more.
‘It is Mademoiselle Fenella, madame,’ said her maid, handing over the receiver. Dame Beatrice said to the mouthpiece of the telephone,
‘Good morning. Fenella, my dear. So you arrived safely at Douston Hall?’
‘Yes, darling, but yesterday, not the day before. Great-aunt, I’ve broken my engagement. Will you come quickly and hold my hand?’
‘Of course, dear child. I will order the car at once and lunch on the way.’
‘Well, don’t take the turning to Seven Wells, that’s all.’
Dame Beatrice did not turn aside to the surprising village of Seven wells, neither did George, her chauffeur, take the quieter but lengthier route which Fenella had followed across country. The big car, keeping strictly to main roads, whirled through the long miles and Dame Beatrice, correctly if somewhat individually gowned for dinner, was able to leer amiably across at her great-niece without having kept her hostess’s table waiting.
Fenella accompanied her to her room when the meal was over, ostensibly to help her to finish her unpacking, but actually to confide in her in private. That her great-niece was anything but unhappy about the breaking-off of the engagement was soon made clear.
‘I never did like Talbot as much as I ought to have done if I was going to marry him,’ said Fenella, ‘and now he’s proved himself such a hound….’
‘He is aptly named,’ said Dame Beatrice, with her eldritch cackle. ‘Well, dear child, I, for one, am not at all sorry that you’ve changed your mind. Who is his supplanter? Anyone known to the family?’ She gazed blandly at Fenella’s blushes.
‘There isn’t anybody. How could there be?’ said the girl, avoiding her elderly relative’s sharp black eyes.
‘You spend a night on the road when you were expected to spend it here. You immediately break your engagement. You send post-haste for me. These things are signs and portents. Recline on the bed, whilst I occupy this excellent armchair, and tell me all.’
‘It’s a long story, and it certainly doesn’t have the ending you seem to suggest,’ said Fenella feebly, remembering (with shame) how reluctant she had been to wash the black smudge off her hand on the evening of her arrival at Douston Hall.
‘Fire away. I am all ears and you have my undivided attention. Begin at the beginning. The last I saw of your car was on Wednesday morning as you drove off in the direction of Cadnam.’
‘Do you mean you want every detail, however slight?’
‘If you please. I prefer my stories to be told in the round, and this one promises to be full of interest.’
‘You can say that again, darling,’ observed Fenella emphatically. ‘Well, it all went according to plan until I went mad and left my perfectly straightforward road to pick up a snack lunch in a village called Seven Wells. I got the lunch all right, but then the car broke down, and that’s how I came to spend a night at the inn. It’s a pub, actually, and the people in it are the landlord and his wife – their name is Shurrock – a gipsy cook called Sukie, a general maid named Clytie – she’s only a girl, of course – and a youth who acts as general factotum. I saw almost nothing of him and I’ve no idea what his name is. Oh, yes, I have, though. It’s Bob – not that it matters.’
‘What happened to your car?’
‘I wish I knew. Before lunch it worked and after lunch it didn’t work. My own idea is that village louts tampered with it while I was in the pub, but I couldn’t prove anything. The landlord was very helpful. He got on to a garage and a man came along, but he had to tow behind the landlord’s car and that’s how it all came about, because the man couldn’t get the repairs done until after lunch on the following morning.’
She described the rest of her adventures, including her conversation with the post-office shop-keepers, and repeated the rumour she had heard that the local Squire had been murdered. This involved mentioning her meeting with Jack-in-the-Green.
‘Most interesting,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I wonder what was the original function of the zodiac people? I have never heard of anything in folk-lore quite like them.’
‘They were a bit frightening, in a way, and that business of collecting the fragments of a skeleton and taking it by torchlight
