Attached to their claws were collecting-boxes made of tin which they rattled as they pranced along behind the Morris dancers and the band. Although they were nightmarish, they were horribly realistic, too; nothing like the things which can be made nowadays for such films as the Argonauts and Sinbad the Sailor, of course, but dreadfully frightening, all the same. When they came up close and shook their collecting boxes, some people, I am sure, hastily dropped coppers into the rattling tins just to get rid of them.
Personally, I let them go by before I followed on and then I walked very slowly, so that by the time I reached Aunt Kirstie's gate the band, the dancers and the masked importunists were away up the hill and the music was almost inaudible.
They're going up to the manor house,' said Kenneth, 'but Aunt Kirstie says they may be coming back this way. The collectors are medical students. Aren't they grand? They're prehistoric animals, you know. I wish I had a costume like that. Why didn't you come along? One of them picked me up and pretended to bite my head off. It was grand. Some of the women screamed. It was terrific'
'I want my dinner,' I said, 'so I shan't bother to go to the front gate if they do come back this way.' Nothing, I felt, would induce me to encounter those fearsome beings again, and that was before we heard about the murder.
Chapter 5
Mrs Kempson Puts Pen To Paper
I am sure of my facts, dear Mrs Bradley. I can assure you of that. I have kept a journal ever since the death of my husband and it is to that which I have referred in beginning this statement to you. The particulars are as concise but, I hope, as complete as it is possible for me to make them. I realise that you have many commitments, but I shall be immensely relieved when you are free to take my brother as your patient. His conduct has become most disquieting and I am in urgent need of professional assistance in determining what is best to be done, both in his interests and my own.
The death of my husband did not, in itself, sadden me. His last illness was prolonged and very distressing, and the termination of his life some ten years ago was a blessed relief to both of us. It was then, as I say, that I took to keeping a journal. It filled a gap and helped to pass a somewhat lonely existence. My only child, a girl, is married and lives mostly abroad, as her husband is attached to one of our embassies. She has two children, Amabel (now at finishing school in Paris) and a young son Lionel, still at his preparatory school.
Sometimes the children come to me for a week or two during the summer, but otherwise my life is lonely and not very interesting, as my only other close relation is my brother Ward, the subject of this analysis. I should add that I have an adopted son, Nigel, but the adoption is not a legal one and there is no question of Nigel's having any claim on me or on the estate. He is supposed to be the son (illegitimate, I fancy) of an actor-manager for whom my late husband, a very wealthy man (fortunately for me!), once acted as an angel-for so, I believe, they call the backers of theatrical enterprises. Nigel's mother, I feel sure, was the leading lady in the production financed by my husband. It sometimes crosses my mind that Nigel may even be the illegitimate son of my husband himself and this actress, as so much was done in putting him to public school and university and then finding him a well-paid sinecure of a job in London with a firm in which my husband had a controlling interest. My husband, in fact, sometimes urged that we should take out adoption papers, but this was a course I steadfastly opposed, as I felt that it was against my daughter's interests.
However, Nigel has always treated Hill House as his home and has proved himself the dearest and most considerate of boys. Nevertheless, I cannot sufficiently stress that there is no consanguinity between us and that he has no claim on anything but my sincere affection. Unfortunately, since he left College and took a flat in London to be near his work, I have seen all too little of him. We meet almost as strangers until the ice is broken by our very real affection for one another, but, even so, his visits come all too seldom.
In view of what I have to tell you, it is necessary to stress the fact that not only has Nigel no claim upon me, but that he has known, ever since he left College, that he has few expectations from me. He has accepted this. He knows that the estate must go to little Lionel and that a great deal of money is needed to keep it up.
Apart from my husband's last illness, I have had only one major anxiety in my life and that, as you will have guessed, is the conduct of my brother Ward. He was always an ill-behaved, malicious child and his way of life did not improve as he grew older. After he had been expelled from two schools the only institution which would accept him as a pupil was a seminary run by the Jesuits. From this he absconded and the next we heard of him was from Canada.
Years passed and my father died. This meant that, as
