Mrs. Anstruther, as Luke soon learned, was devoted, body and soul, to gardening.
After acknowledging the introduction, she
said now, "I believe those new rock roses
would do perfectly in this climate," and proceeded
to immerse herself in catalogues.
Throwing his squat little figure back in his
chair. Lord Easterfield sipped his tea and
studied Luke appraisingly.
"So you write books," he murmured.
Feeling slightly nervous, Luke was about to
enter on explanations, when he perceived that
Lord Easterfield was not really seeking for
information. "I've often thought," said His
Lordship complacently, "that I'd like to write
a book myself. Trouble is, I haven't got the
time. I'm a very busy man."
"Of course. You must be."
"You wouldn't believe what I've got on
my shoulders," said Lord Easterfield. "I take
a personal interest in each one of my publications.
I consider that I'm responsible for
molding the public mind. Next week millions
of people will be thinking and feeling
just exactly what I've intended to make them
feel and think. That's a very solemn thought.
That means responsibility. Well, I don't mind
responsibility. I'm not afraid of it. I can do
with responsibility."
Lord Easterfield swelled out his chest, attempted
to draw in his stomach, and glared
amiably at Luke. Bridget Comway said
lightly, "You're a great man, Gordon. Have
some more tea."
Lord Easterfield replied simply, "I am a
great man. No, I won't have any more tea."
Then, descending from his own Olympian
heights to the level of more ordinary mortals, he inquired kindly of his guest: "Know anybody
round this part of the world?"
Luke shook his head. Then, on an impulse, and feeling that the sooner he began
to get down to his job the better, he added:
"At least, there's a man here that I promised
to look up--friend of mine. Man called
Humbleby. He's a doctor."
"Oh!" Lord Easterfield struggled upright
in his chair. "Doctor Humbleby? Pity."
"What's a pity?"
"Died about a week ago," said Lord
Easterfield.
"Oh, dear," said Luke. "I'm sorry about
that."
"Don't think you'd have cared for him,"
said Lord Easterfield. "Opinionated, pestilential, muddle-headed old fool."
"Which means," put in Bridget, "that he
disagreed with Gordon."
"Question of our water supply," said Lord
Easterfield. "I may tell you, Mr. Fitzwilliam, that I'm a public-spirited man. I've got the
welfare of this town at heart. I was born
here. Yes, born in this very town."
Exhaustive details of Lord Easterfield's career
were produced for Luke's benefit, and
the former wound up triumphantly: "Do you
know what stands where my father's shop
used to be? A fine building, built and endowed
by me--Institute, Boys' Club, everything
tiptop and up to date. Employed the
best architect in the country! I must say he's
made a bare plain job of it--looks like a
workhouse or a prison to me--but they say
it's all right, so I suppose it must be."
"Cheer up," said Bridget. "You had your
own way over this house."
Lord Easterfield chuckled appreciatively.
"Yes, they tried to put it over on me here!
When one architect wouldn't do what I
wanted, I sacked him and got another. The
fellow I got in the end understood my ideas
pretty well."
"He pandered to your worst flights of
imagination," said Bridget.
"She'd have liked the place left as it was,"
said Lord Easterfield. He patted her arm.
"No use living in the past, my dear. I always
had a fancy for a castle, and now I've got
one!"
"Well," said Luke, a little at a loss for
words, "it's a great thing to know what you
want."
"And I usually get it too," said the other, chuckling.
"You nearly didn't get your way about the
water scheme," Bridget reminded him.
"Oh, that!" said Lord Easterfield. "Humbleby
to be pigheaded. They won't listen to
reason."
"Doctor Humbleby was rather an outspoken
man, wasn't he?" Luke ventured. "He
made a good many enemies that way, I should
imagine."
"N-no, I don't know that I should say
that," demurred Lord Easterfield, rubbing
his nose. "Eh, Bridget?"
"He was very popular with everyone, I
always thought," said Bridget. "I only saw
him when he came about my ankle that time, but I thought he was a dear."
"Yes, he was popular enough, on the
whole," admitted Lord Easterfield. "Though
I know one or two people who had it in for
him. Lots of little feuds and cliques in a
place like this," he said.
"Yes, I suppose so," said Luke. He hesitated, uncertain of his next step. "What sort
of people live here mostly?" he queried.
It was rather a weak question, but he got
an instant response. "Relicts, mostly," said
Bridget. "Clergymen's daughters and sisters
and wives. Doctors' dittos. About six women
to every man."
"But there are some men?" hazarded
Luke.
"Oh, yes, there's Mr. Abbot, the solicitor, and young Doctor Thomas, Doctor
Humbleby's partner, and Mr. Wake, the rector, and--Who else is there, Gordon? Oh!
Mr. Ellsworthy, who keeps the antique shop.
And Major Horton and his bulldogs."
"There's somebody else I believe my
friends mentioned as living down here," said
Luke. "They said she was a nice old pussy, but talked a lot. What was the name, now?
I've got it. Fullerton."
Lord Easterfield said, with a hoarse
chuckle, "Really, you've no luck! She's dead
too. Got run over the other day in London.
Killed outright."
"You seem to have a lot of deaths here,"
said Luke lightly.
Lord Easterfield bridled immediately.
"Not at all. One of the healthiest places in
England. Can't count accidents. They may
happen to anyone."
But Bridget Conway said thoughtfully, "As
a matter of fact, Gordon, there have been a
lot of deaths in the last year. They're always
having funerals."
"Nonsense, my dear."
Luke said, "Was Doctor Humbleby's
death an accident too?"
Lord Easterfield shook his head. "Oh, no," he said. "Humbleby died of acute septicemia.
Just like a doctor. Scratched his finger
with a rusty nail or something, paid no
attention to it, and it turned septic. He was
dead in three days."
"Doctors are rather like that," said
Bridget. "And of course they're very liable
to infection, I suppose, if they don't take
care. I
t was sad though. His wife was brokenhearted."
"No good of rebelling against the will of
Providence," said Lord Easterfield easily.
But was it the will of Providence? Luke
asked himself later as he changed into his
dinner jacket. Septicemia? Perhaps. A very
sudden death though. And there echoed
through his head Bridget Conway's light spoken
words: "--there have been a lot of deaths
in the last year."
Four
luke had thought out his plan of campaign
with some care and prepared to put it into
action without more ado when he came down
to breakfast the following morning. The gardening
aunt was not in evidence, but Lord
Easterfield was eating kidneys and drinking
coffee, and Bridget Conway had finished her
meal and was standing at the window looking
out. After good-mornings had been exchanged
and Luke had sat down with a
plentifully heaped plate of eggs and bacon, he began.
"I must get to work," he said. "Difficult
thing is to induce people to talk. You know
what I mean, not people like you and--er--
Bridget." He remembered just in time not to
say "Miss Conway." "You'd tell me anything
you knew. But the trouble is, you
wouldn't know the things I want to know--
that is, the local superstitions. You'd hardly
believe the amount of superstition that still
lingers in out-of-the-way parts of the world.
Why, there's a village in Devonshire. The
rector had to remove some old granite
menhirs that stood by the church, because
the people persisted in marching round them
in some old ritual every time there was a
death. Extraordinary how old heathen rites
persist."
Here followed almost verbatim a page of a
work that Luke had read up for the occasion.
"Deaths are the most hopeful line," he
ended. "Burial rites and customs always survive
longer than any others. Besides, for some
reason or other, village people always like
talking about deaths."
"They enjoy funerals," agreed Bridget
from the window.
"I thought I'd make that my starting
point," went on Luke. "If I can get a list of
recent demises in the parish, track down the
relatives and get into conversation, I've no
doubt I shall soon get a hint of what I'm
after. Who had I better get the data from--
the parson?"
"Mr. Wake would probably be very interested,"
said Bridget. "He's quite an old dear
and a bit of an antiquary. He could give you
a lot of stuff, I expect."
Luke had a momentary qualm during
which he hoped that the clergyman might
not be so efficient an antiquary as to expose
his own pretensions. Aloud, he said heartily 5
"Good. You've no idea, I suppose, of likely
people who've died during the last year."
Bridget murmured, "Let me see. Carter,
of course. He was the landlord of the Seven
Stars, that nasty little pub down by the
river."
"A drunken ruffian," said Lord Easterfield.
"One of these socialistic, abusive
brutes. A good riddance."
"And Mrs. Rose, the laundress," went on
Bridget. "And little Tommy Pierce; he was a
nasty little boy, if you like. Oh, of course,
and that girl Amy What's-Her-Name?" Her
voice changed slightly as she uttered the last
name.
"Amy?" said Luke.
"Amy Gibbs. She was housemaid here,
and then she went to Miss Waynflete. There
was an inquest on her."
"Why?"
"Fool of a girl mixed up some bottles in
the dark," said Lord Easterfield.
"She took what she thought was cough
mixture, and it was hat paint," explained
Bridget.
Luke raised his eyebrows. "Somewhat of a
tragedy."
Bridget said, "There was some idea of her
having done it on purpose. Some row with a
young man." She spoke slowly, almost reluctantly.
There was a pause. Luke felt instinctively
the presence of some unspoken feeling
weighing down the atmosphere.
He thought, "Amy Gibbs? Yes, that was
one of the names old Miss Fullerton
mentioned." She had also mentioned a small
boy--Tommy someone--of whom she had
evidently held a low opinion--this, it seemed, was shared by Bridget. And, yes, he was
almost sure; the name Carter had been spoken
too. Rising, he said lightly, "Talking
like this makes me feel rather ghoulish--as
though I dabbled only in graveyards. Marriage
customs are interesting, too, but rather
more difficult to introduce into conversation
unconcernedly."
"I should imagine that was likely," said
Bridget, with a faint twitch of the lips.
"Ill-wishing or overlooking--there's another
interesting subject," went on Luke, with a would-be show of enthusiasm. "You
often get that in these Old World places.
Know of any gossip of that kind here?"
Lord Easter-field slowly shook his head.
ridget Conway said, "We shouldn't be
y to hear of things like that."
uke took it up almost before she finished
iking: "No doubt about it, I've got to
re in lower social spheres to get what I
it. I'll be off to the vicarage first and see
it I can get there. After there perhaps a
t to the—Seven Stars, did you say? And
it about the small boy of unpleasant habDid
he leave any sorrowing relatives?"
'Mrs. Pierce keeps a tobacco and paper
>p in High Street."
That," said Luke, "is nothing less than
evidential. Well, I'll be on my way."
With a swift, graceful movement, Bridget
»ved from the window. "I think," she said,
11 come with you, if you don't mind."
"Of course not." He said it as heartily as
ssible, but he wondered if she had noticed
it, just for a moment, he had been taken
ack. It would have been easier for him to
ndle an elderly antiquarian clergyman withit
an alert, discerning intelligence by his
ie. "Oh, well," he thought to himself. "It's
) to me to do my stuff convincingly."
Bridget said, "Will you just wait, Luke,
hilst I change my shoes?"
what else could she have called him? Since
she had agreed to Jimmy's scheme of
cousinship, she could hardly call him Mr.
Fitzwilliam. He thought, suddenly and uneasily, "What does she think of it all? What
does she think?" He had thought of her--if
he had thought of her at all--as a little blond
secretary person, astute enough to have captured
a rich man's fancy. Instead she had
force, brains, a cool clear intelligence, and he
had no idea what she was thinking of him.
He thought: "She's not an easy person to
deceive."
"I'
m ready now," She had joined him so
silently that he had not heard her approach.
She wore no hat, and there was no net on
her hair. As they stepped out from the house,
the wind, sweeping round the corner of the
castellated monstrosity, caught her long black
hair and whipped it into a sudden frenzy
round her face.
Looking back at the battlements behind
him, he said irritably, "What an abomination
1 Couldn't anyone stop him?"
Bridget answered, "An Englishman's
house is his castle--literally so in Gordon's
case! He adores it."
rnnspions that the remark was in bad taste,
«By __
"It's your old home, isn't it? Do you 'adore'
to see it the way it is now?"
She looked at him then--a steady, slightly
amused look, it was. "I hate to destroy the
dramatic picture you are building up," she
murmured. "But actually I left here when I
was two and a half, so you see the old-home
motive doesn't apply. I can't even remember
this place."
"You're right," said Luke. "Forgive the
lapse into film language."
She laughed! "Truth," she said, "is seldom
romantic." And there was a sudden
bitter scorn in her voice that startled him.
He flushed a deep red under his tan, then
realized suddenly that the bitterness had not
been aimed at him. It was her own scorn
and her own bitterness. Luke was wisely
silent. But he wondered a good deal about
Bridget Conway.
Five minutes brought them to the church
and to the vicarage that adjoined it. They
found the vicar in his study. Alfred Wake
was a small stooping old man with very mild
blue eyes and an absent-minded but courteous
air. He seemed pleased, but a little surprised
by the visit.
"Mr. Fitzwilliam is staying with us at Ashe
Manor," said Bridget, "and he wants to consult
you about a book he is writing."
Mr. Wake turned his mild, inquiring eyes
toward the younger man, and Luke plunged
into explanations. He was nervous--doubly
so. Nervous, in the first place, because this
man had no doubt a far deeper knowledge of
folklore and superstitious rites and customs
than one could acquire by merely hurriedly
cramming from a haphazard collection of
books. Secondly, he was nervous because
Bridget Conway was standing by, listening.