As she had walked round the churchyard, she had been surprised to see a small crane in operation. It was attended by three men, and it was engaged in lifting the stone lid of a gigantic sarcophagus. This was in the nature of a vault, for the lid was almost level with the ground. The inference which Fenella drew was an obvious one. They were preparing for the interment of someone of importance in a communal grave. She had skirted the tomb and entered the church by the south door. The porch was modern, in terms of ecclesiastical building, but the door itself was the original one, she thought, and retained a sanctuary knocker.
When she returned to the churchyard she discovered that the three workmen had gone, leaving the crane in position and the sarcophagus open to the sky. Fenella approached it and peered in. It was deep and she fancied that a musty smell came up from it; but that, she thought, might only be her imagination. She could make out shelves and what appeared to be armoured knights lying on them. By the time she had finished her inspection and returned to the lych-gate there were still twenty minutes to dispose of before it seemed reasonable to return to the inn. She wondered where the seven wells were, from which the village took its name, and whether, in fact, they still existed, but the time at her disposal was too short to allow of exploration and there was still nobody about to whom she could put any questions.
She wandered aimlessly back past the inn and noted that at the end of the main street there was a low-crowned hill which seemed to guard the village on that side. It had been fortified in pre-Roman times with banks and ditches, and Fenella wondered whether any archaeological excavations had been made there. She had passed a half-timbered house which advertised itself as a folk-museum, but it was closed and so could supply no information on the subject.
Although it did not seem to be very far away, she still had not time enough to get to the hill-fort and back, so she continued to stroll, thankful that the weather was fine and the afternoon reasonably warm for the time of year. She met only one person on the way back. This was the unsavoury youth who had boasted of wrecking the telephone kiosk. He leered at her as they passed one another and muttered something which, perhaps fortunately, she did not catch. She ignored him and quickened her steps towards the More to Come.
The inn had that never-to-come-alive-again appearance common to pubs out of licensing hours, but she took heart, knowing that the landlord would be expecting her, and knocked loudly and confidently on the door she had used before. The gipsy-woman opened it and there floated out the rich aroma of a big country home-baking.
‘Will you tell them I’m back, if they’re ready to go to Croyton?’ said Fenella, taking refuge in the plural form, as she did not know the landlord’s name.
‘Best you come in and wait,’ said the gipsy, her sloe-black eyes expressionless in her high-boned, dark-skinned face. ‘Master been called away while you was gone.’
‘Oh, dear!’ cried Fenella. ‘And I’m terribly behind time already! I suppose my wretched car won’t change its mind and start?’ She ran over to it and wrestled feverishly, impassively watched by the gipsy who called across to her at last, in repetition of her previous invitation.
‘Best you come in and wait.’
‘How long do you think he’ll be?’ asked Fenella, entering the house.
‘No tellin’, with that one,’ said the gipsy, closing the door. ‘ ’Tis Mayerin’ Eve, you see. Come this way, then.’ She led Fenella through the saloon bar into a scullery and through a kitchen where the air was hot and the smell of baking more aromatic and pungent than before, to the blocked-up hall door of the inn. Near it there was a well-carpeted staircase which the gipsy indicated. ‘Up there. Lounge be the first door you’ll come to. You’ll be well enough there for a bit, so not to fret.’
‘Thank you. It’s a fine old church you have here,’ said Fenella, in a friendly, conversational tone.
‘They do say as the old church was built right where this house is,’ said the gipsy, with a secretive smile which reminded Fenella of one of the stone heads she had seen on a pillar in the church.
‘The old church? But the church I visited must have been built five or six hundred years ago,’ she said. ‘Do you mean there was an even earlier church here?’
‘Time passes when you be out of the swim of it,’ said the woman. She nodded and turned back towards the kitchen. Fenella mounted the steep stair and found the lounge. It overlooked the street and was dark-panelled, had a handsome carved-oak overmantel and a ceiling ornately decorated with plaster-work. The windows were closed and, although there was no trace of dust, the room gave the impression that it was seldom used.
Fenella opened a casement window which looked out on to the village street. She felt the exasperation of helplessness and cursed the idle whim which had caused her to abandon the safe certainty of Cridley, where, at least, there were garages with facilities for dealing with recalcitrant cars, to come to this out of the world
