as Rampole made a movement, 'on this occasion, no. There are confidential matters I must express. Without interference, I hope. I have already discharged a part of my duty in handing over the keys to Mr. Martin Starberth. The rest remains. As — ah — possibly an older friend than the rest of you,' his thin voice went high and rasping, and he almost snarled, 'I may possibly be permitted to keep some matters confidential.'
Rampole was so mad that he came close to an absurd gulp. 'Did you say `manners'?' he asked.
'Steady,' said Dr. Fell.
'Come along, Miss Starberth,' said the lawyer.
They saw him shoot in his cuffs and hobble forward, and the white flash of his eyes as he glanced
his shoulder. Rampole pressed the girl's hand; then both of them were gone…
'Tut, tut!' complained the doctor, after a pause. 'Don't swear. He's only jealous of his position as family adviser. I'm much too worried to swear. I had a theory, but… I don't know. It's going all wrong. All wrong… Come along to dinner.'
Mumbling to himself, he led the way up the lane. Something cried aloud in Rampole's heart, and the dusk was full of phantoms. For a moment the released, laughing creature with the wind in her hair as she raced; the wistfulness of the square sombre face, wry-smiling on a bridge; the practicality, the mockery, the little Puckish humours; then suddenly the pallor by the hedge, and the small gasp when these terrors crept back. Don't let anything happen to her. Keep good watch, that no harm may touch her. Keep good watch, for this is her brother….
Their footfalls rustled in the grass, and the insect-hum pulsed in shrill droning. Distantly, in the thick air to the west, there was a mutter of thunder.
Chapter 5
Heat. Heat thick and sickly, with breezes that came as puffs out of an oven, made a gust in the trees, and then died. If this cottage had really been a Swiss barometer, the little figures would have been wildly swinging in their chalet now.
They dined by candlelight, in the little oak room with the pewter dishes round the walls. The room was as warm as the dinner, and the wine warmer than both; Dr. Fell's face grew redder as he kept filling and refilling his glass. But his blowings and easy oratory were gone now. Even Mrs. Fell was quiet, though jumpy. She kept passing the wrong things, and nobody noticed it.
Nor did they linger over coffee, cigars, and port, as was the doctor's; custom. Afterwards Rampole went up to his room. He lighted the oil-lamp and began to change his clothes. Old soiled tennis-flannels, a comfortable shirt, and tennis shoes. His room was a small one with a sloping roof, under the eaves, its one window looking out towards the side of Chatterham prison and the Hag's Nook. Some sort of flying beetle banged against the window- screen with a thump that made him start, and a moth was already fluttering round the lamp.
It was a relief to be doing something. He finished dressing and took a few restless strides about. Up here the heat was thick with a smell of dry timber, like an attic; even the paste behind the flowered wall-paper seemed to give out a stifling odour; and the lamp was worst of all. Putting his head against the screen, he peered out. The moon was rising, unhealthy and yellow-ringed; it was past ten o'clock. Damn the uncertainty! A travelling-clock ticked with irritating nonchalance on the table at the head of his four-poster bed. The calendar in the lower part of the clock-case showed a staring figure where he had been last July 12th; and couldn't remember. Another gust of wind swished in the trees. Heat, prickling out damply on him and flowing over the brain in dizzy waves; heat…. He blew out the lamp.
Stuffing pipe and oilskin pouch into his pocket, he went downstairs. A rocking-chair squeaked tirelessly in the parlour, where Mrs. Fell was reading a paper with large pictures. Rampole groped out across the lawn. The doctor had drawn two wicker chairs round to the side of the house looking towards the prison, where it was very dark and considerably cooler. Glowing red, the bowl of the doctor's pipe moved there; Rampole found a cold glass put into his hand as he sat down.
'Nothing now,' said Dr. Fell, 'but to wait.'
That very distant thunder moved in the west, with a noise which was really like a bowling-ball curving down the alley, never to hit any pins. Rampole took a deep drink of the cold beer. That was better! The moon was far from strong, but already the cup of the meadow lay washed in a light like skimmed-milk, which was creeping up the walls.
'Which is the window of the Governor's Room?' he asked, in a low voice.
The red bowl gestured. 'That large one — the only large one. It's in an almost direct line from here. Do you see it? Just beside it there's an iron door opening on a small stone balcony. That's where the governor stepped out to oversee the hangings.'
Rampole nodded. The whole side was covered with ivy, bulging in places where the weight of the masonry had made it sink into the crest of the hill. In the skimmed-milk light he could see tendrils hanging from the heavy bars in the window. Immediately beneath the balcony, but very far down, was another iron door. In front of this door, the limestone hill tumbled down sheer into the pointed fir trees of the Hag's Nook.
'And the door below,' he said, 'is where they took the condemned out, I suppose?'
'Yes. You can still see the three blocks of stone, with the holes in them, that held the framework of the gallows… The stone coping of the well is hidden in those trees. They weren't there, of course, when the well was in use.'
'All the dead were dumped into it?'
'Oh yes. You wonder the whole countryside isn't polluted, even after a hundred years. As it is, the well is a rare place for bugs and vermin. Dr. Markley had been agitating about it for the last fifteen years; but he can't get the borough or council to do anything about it, because it's Starberth land. Hmf.'
'And they won't let it be filled in?'
'No. That's a part of the old mumbo-jumbo, too; a relic of the eighteenth-century Anthony. I've been going over Anthony's journal again. And when — I think of the way he died, and certain puzzling references in the journal, I sometimes think…'
'You haven't yet told me how he died,' Rampole said, quietly.
As he said it he wondered whether he wanted to know. Last night he thought, he was certain, that something wet had been looking down from the prison wall. In daytime he had not noticed it, but now he was aware of a distinct marshy smell, which seemed to be blowing across the meadow from the Hag's Nook.
'I forgot,' muttered the old lexicographer. 'I was going to read it to you this afternoon when Mrs. F. interrupted us. Here.' There was a rustle of paper, and a thick bundle of sheets was put into his hand. 'Take it upstairs later; I want you to read it and form your own opinions.'
Were those frogs croaking? He could hear it plainly above the twitching and pulsing of insects. By God! that marshy odour was stronger; it was no illusion. There must be some natural explanation of it — the heat of the day released from the ground, or something. He wished he knew more about nature. The trees had begun to whisper uneasily again. Inside the house, a clock bonged out a single note.
'Half-past ten,' grunted his host. 'And I think that's the rector's car coming up the lane.'
Unsteady headlights were gleaming there. Bumping and rattling, a high old Model T Ford — the kind they used to tell the jokes about-swung round to a stop, the rector looking huge on his perch. He hurried over in the moonlight, catching up a chair from the front of the lawn. His bluff and easy airs were not so much in evidence now; Rampole had a sudden feeling that they were assumed, for social purposes, to cover an intense self-consciousness. They could not see his face well in the gloom, but they knew he was perspiring. He panted as he sat down.
'I snatched a quick meal, he said, 'and came straightway. Did you arrange everything?'
'Everything. She'll telephone when he leaves. Here, have a cigar and a glass of beer. How was he when you saw him last?'
A bottle jittered and clicked against the side of a glass. 'Sober enough to be frightened,' the rector answered. 'He went for the sideboard as soon as we reached the Hall. I was of two minds as to whether to stop his drinking. Herbert's got him in hand, though. When I left the Hall he was sitting up in his room lighting one cigarette from the end of the last; he must have smoked a whole box
