In the face of such reason I had to back down.
“So you have no way of contacting Inspector Newcombe at all? You couldn’t find out where his meeting is being held?”
The constable considered this. “I suppose I could put through a telephone call to the main police station in Exeter and they might know how to find him, but he wouldn’t half be mad at me if I brought him back here for nothing.”
“I can promise you it’s not for nothing,” I said. “We now have proof that all those deaths were murders, you see.”
“You don’t say!” He stared at me, wide-eyed.
“And another man has died this morning and more people will go on dying unless the murderer is stopped.”
“Well, I never. Who’d have thought it around here?” he said. “I don’t recall there ever being a murder in these parts. Just like London, isn’t it?”
“So will you try to contact the inspector for us, please?” I asked.
“I’ll do my best, miss,” he said.
“We shouldn’t wait around any longer,” Darcy said. “They’ll worry where we’ve got to. And I’ve borrowed Monty’s motorcar without permission. The inspector will come out to us as soon as he gets your note.”
“I should add something about Mr. Klein,” I said and on the back of the envelope I wrote,
Then reluctantly we had to drive back to Tiddleton-under-Lovey. The field where the chase had taken place now had an abandoned feel to it, with bits of bunting flapping in the wind and the ghostly shapes of booths looming over the fence. Johnnie’s roguish face swam into my mind and I remembered the others teasing him about entering the race because of his age. He had felt himself immortal then. I squeezed my eyes shut in an attempt to blot out the pain.
We put the motor back in the old stables beside the house and went in to find everyone in a mellow mood after the exertions of the race and the large amount of alcohol consumed. Cherie and Ethel had now attached themselves to Monty and Badger and were sitting beside them on a sofa. The adults were drinking coffee and looking bored. Lady Hawse-Gorzley waylaid me in the passageway.
“Oh, there you are. I suspect you slipped away with my nephew, you naughty girl.” She wagged a finger, but she was smiling.
“We tried to find Inspector Newcombe,” I said. “We discovered something he ought to know.”
She brushed back her hair from her face in a distracted gesture. “These deaths—I’m really beginning to believe in the Lovey Curse. I can’t explain them any other way. And Wild Sal was out there at the Chase today, dancing around as bold as you please. It would not surprise me one bit if she were a witch.” She paused, then managed an embarrassed smile. “Oh, I know one is supposed to be modern and pooh-pooh anything supernatural, but in this part of the world we take the supernatural seriously.”
“I don’t think she’s responsible for these deaths,” I said.
“Then how can they be explained?” she snapped. “Seeing poor Johnnie today . . . I’ve known him all my life. We used to play together when we were children. Am I really to believe that he suffered a heart attack?”
“I think we’ll find out that he was murdered,” I said. “I think we’ll find that these were all well-planned murders.”
She glared at me fiercely. “Then who will be next?” she said. “Shouldn’t I send my guests away now rather than expose them to this kind of danger?”
“I think your guests are safe. It seems to be only local people—people about whom the killer knows an awful lot.”
She shuddered. “Horrible. Horrible. I worry about Oswald. He often goes off alone, tramping all over the estate. He takes the dogs with him, but they can’t protect him, can they?”
I put a tentative hand on her arm. “We may be near to solving this,” I said. “I suggest we keep everyone close to the house for the rest of their time here.”
“What about the Worsting of the Hag?” she said. “They’ll want to take part in that, won’t they? It’s the big event.”
“What exactly happens?”
“On New Year’s Eve every year, everyone goes from house to house around the village, banging on pots and pans and drums, making noise to drive out evil spirits. It’s supposed to be the reenactment of the time when they chased the witch around the village before they caught her on Lovey Tor. Always great fun.”
“But dangerous,” I said. “How can you protect people out in the dark?”
She shrugged. “We’ll have to enlist the help of the police, won’t we? We can’t stop the festival. It’s been going for two hundred–plus years.”
She peered into the sitting room. “Oh, God. What are we going to do with them? Look at them—just sitting there, waiting to be entertained. I do wish I hadn’t undertaken this stupid farce.” She looked at me for understanding. “You’ve probably heard by now that they’re all paying guests.”
I nodded.
“We needed the money, you see. Things have not been going well and this seemed like such a good opportunity.” She sighed. “But I wish to God we had never done it. I even began to wonder whether these deaths were some kind of punishment for not accepting our lot.”
“I’m sure they’re not,” I said. “Look, why don’t I go and set up another skittles tournament for them? And maybe we could ask Mr. Barclay to give them an organ concert in the church. He plays very well.”
“What a splendid idea. Thank you, Georgiana. You’ve been a big help to me.”
I didn’t think I’d been that much of a help at all and I suddenly felt awkward about accepting money from her. After all, I was having a far better Christmas than I would have had at Castle Rannoch. Actually, I’d have paid her to be away from Fig!
* * *
AFTER LUNCH I took Mrs. Upthorpe, Ethel and Mrs. Wexler for a walk with me to see Mr. Barclay. I didn’t feel like going anywhere alone anymore and they all seemed at loose ends. All the way down the drive they chatted about fashions and dressmakers and ladies’ magazines until I felt quite left out. Sometimes it’s hard to be penniless.
Mr. Barclay’s eyes darted nervously when he saw us standing on his doorstep.
“Well, this is an unexpected pleasure. A peeress of the realm in my humble cottage,” he said, but he didn’t look very pleased. He invited us into a neat, old-fashioned front parlor that looked as if it hadn’t been touched since his grandmother’s day, and offered us tea. It seemed rude to refuse and we sat uncomfortably while he kept apologizing for not having anything suitable to offer us to accompany the tea. If only he’d known we were coming, he said, he’d have baked something. When he heard the reason for our visit he perked up no end.
“Oh, how kind of you,” he said. “What an honor. I shall be thrilled, positively thrilled. Now you’ve given me a challenging task—what piece of music to play. What a delicious dilemma, isn’t it?”
We set the time of the concert for three o’clock the next day (“Not after dark, if you please; the church lighting is so poor and my hands won’t work when they get too cold”) and were glad to take our leave.
“Poor little man, I feel rather sorry for him, don’t you?” Mrs. Upthorpe said when we could finally take our leave. “Such a lonely life. Probably has nobody in the village to talk to.”
We arrived back to a second, and more satisfying, tea. The day seemed to drag on and on, with no news from the inspector. We played charades again before dinner, but this time it felt as if nobody’s heart was really in it and nobody had the urge to dress up, after the previous night’s horror. We had just gone up to change for dinner when there was a tap on my bedroom door. I opened it to find one of the maids.
“If you please, my lady, that police inspector has come to see you,” she said. “I’ve put him in the master’s study.”
I hurriedly finished dressing and went down the stairs. Inspector Newcombe had been pacing the room and spun around as I entered.
“I came because my constable impressed upon me that you had something terribly important to tell me. A matter of life and death, I believe was how he put it.”
