‘When will you go?’
‘Tomorrow. The sooner I get there the better, I think. Robert is sending one of his own men down, so I shall not be without support.’
‘What did you mean about your great-niece’s letter having some connection with this one?’
‘The murdered squire lived just outside the village where Fenella spent the night when her car broke down after she left us to join her cousins in Douston, that is all. She writes to say that she is staying at the same inn, as it is nearest to her husband’s school. She goes on to tell me that in the space of about a fortnight the management and the whole staff at the inn has changed. Not one of the inmates whom she met on her previous visit is the same. She regards this as strange, and so do I.’
‘I suppose the other people sold it, or else the brewers have put another manager in charge.’
‘The inn may have changed hands, but one would think that some, if not all, of the staff would have stayed. Seven Wells is only a village, and in a village there are not so many chances of employment that people lightly change their work. Besides, there were some slightly bizarre features about that particular inn which I find extremely interesting. I shall certainly pay it a visit while I am staying with Lady Bitton-Bittadon. I really cannot think why she wants me. When I wrote to dear Robert I fully intended to put up at the More to Come if they could accommodate me. However, it seems that Lady Bitton-Bittadon is determined to have me at the manor house.’
‘Wants to keep an eye on you, perhaps. Could look a bit suspicious,’ said Laura cynically.
‘Well, at any rate, the local superintendent of police and Robert’s London detective-inspector have been warned of my imminent arrival and are to give me their full co-operation.’
‘Yes,’ said Laura, eyeing her employer, ‘I bet they are! And if Fenella hadn’t got herself mixed up in something fishy, you wouldn’t be going within a hundred miles of Seven Wells, would you?’
Fenella was finding the More to Come changed in other ways, apart from the disappearance of the Shurrocks, Sukie, Clytie and Bob. At the end of the journey from Douston to Seven Wells, after she had dropped off her new-wedded lord at Saint Crispin’s school, where he was to finish the term before taking up his appointment after the summer vacation, she had driven to the More to Come where she had written to engage a room, fully expecting to find the inn in its former condition and herself entering it, as before, by way of the side door to the saloon bar.
All that was altered. During her comparatively short absence, the car-park had been covered smoothly with asphalt and a neat notice on the side door read: Entrance at front. She walked out into the street, found the front door, which previously had been barred, standing wide open, and entered a neat, square hall with two small, swinging, glass signs above doors which faced one another. One said Bar, the other Dining Room. The only feature which Fenella recognised was the front staircase, at the foot of which was a notice: Visitors’ Lounge. T.V. Another notice, adjacent to it and supplemented by the painting of a large golden hand with pointing forefinger, said: Reception.
As she had told Dame Beatrice in her letter, there was no sign of the Shurrocks, Clytie, Sukie or the boy who had helped with Fenella’s luggage on her previous visit. A golden-haired woman was in charge of the reception desk and a uniformed porter who collected her baggage when she had registered her name, address and nationality, led the way up the front stairs past the lounge and the bathroom which Fenella had used on her previous visit, and up another flight of stairs and along a corridor. Here he unlocked a bedroom door, handed Fenella the key, dumped her suitcase on to the stand designed to receive it, thanked her for the tip she handed him and departed, closing the door behind him.
The furnishing of the room was new, adequate and functional. There were hand and bath towels and an armchair as well as a dressing-table stool. The taps ran hot and cold water, there were writing paper and envelopes in one small top drawer, shoe-cleaning impregnated paper in another, and there was a neat list of meal-times under the glass top of the dressing-table.
‘This could be simply anywhere,’ said Fenella aloud. She went to the window and looked out. Her room was at the end of the corridor and she realised that it could not be ‘simply anywhere’ after all. The window was at the side of the inn which faced away from the village. The prospect before her was of a country road and the menacing hill-fort on which the hermaphrodite skeleton had been buried not much more than two weeks before.
There was a bathroom on the opposite side of the corridor. Fenella bathed, dressed and went down to dinner. The diningroom was what had been the saloon bar, but she scarcely recognised it. A waiter showed her to a small table and she had scarcely seated herself in the chair which he sedulously drew out for her when she saw her husband advancing towards her. This was completely unexpected.
‘Hullo again,’ he said, seating himself. ‘Hillson offered to take prep, for me tonight, so I came along. Are you pleased to see me, or had you made other arrangements? This is a dashed unsatisfactory sort of peculiar honeymoon, anyway.’
The waiter handed them menus and a tall, dark man, wearing a flower in his buttonhole, approached with the wine-list.
T hope you will be very comfortable with us, Mrs Pardieu,’ he said. ‘I am the manager. I think you met my wife at the reception desk
