‘I doubt it, child. Besides, I imagine that the lines of investigation followed by the police and ourselves ultimately will be widely different. Swallow your disappointment and let us go on to Newcombe Soulbury, where, perchance, we shall meet with good-fortune.’

  Laura cheered up at once, and observed, with complete lack of civic morality, that there, at any rate, she proposed to be one jump ahead of the police whatever she had to risk to accomplish this.

  The second village lay west by south of Easey, but it could not be reached by car by any very direct route, and Laura, who had to drive twenty-two miles in order to arrive once more on the circumference of her nine-mile circle, had been right in believing that it would not be possible to have walked to Newcombe Soulbury from the Nine Stones. A couple of miles, at last, up a long steep hill brought them to the home of the missing Mr. Battle, whose disappearance dated from 1930.

  ‘I can see the studio,’ said Laura. ‘It seems as though disappearing from home is a foible confined to painters. Is that so?’

  ‘I have no statistics,’ said Mrs. Bradley, getting out of the car and walking towards the cottage, ‘but it is a point which ought to be kept in mind during this enquiry.’

  ‘Probably only coincidence that both these chaps were painters,’ said Laura. ’The county must be lousy with artists, with all this scenery about.’

  The cottage was double-fronted and, built on to it, they discovered, at the back, was a long room, uncurtained, and containing a bar counter. One or two bottles stood on shelves at the back of the bar, the bare floor was of polished boards, and a piano stood in one corner.

  They took all this in, and then Mrs. Bradley said loudly (for she saw that they were under observation from an upstair window at the back of the house) :

  ‘I don’t think this can be the place.’

  The window was opened, and a head came out.

  ‘Did you want anything?’ it demanded.

  ‘We came to see the birthplace,’ said Laura. The window was closed, and soon a large, untidy-looking, handsome woman opened the back door and came out to them. She appeared to be about forty years old.

  ‘Can I direct you anywhere?’ she demanded in a truculent tone.

  ‘Yes, please. We are looking for the birthplace of William Barnes,’ said Mrs. Bradley, briskly.

  ‘Then you’d better look somewhere else,’ the woman replied. ‘This is a private house.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ said Laura, hoping for a hint from Mrs. Bradley. ‘We thought, perhaps…’

  ‘Well, it isn’t,’ said the woman. ‘And the bar is not for customers. It’s a freak idea of my husband’s, and my husband doesn’t like strangers.’

  Mrs. Bradley touched Laura’s arm, and, under the hostile gaze of the handsome, blowsey-looking creature, they moved towards the gate.

  ‘Hasn’t helped much,’ said Laura, opening the door of the car for her employer. ‘What a model for Augustus John, though! I should think she’d be lovely if she took the trouble, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘And I do not agree that our visit hasn’t helped. Do not be in a hurry to start the car. Could you look inside the bonnet or something for a minute?’

  It was whilst Laura was carrying out these instructions that the garden gate opened and the woman came out to them.

  ‘Are you going into Newcombe?’ she enquired.

  ‘Is that the same as Newcombe Soulbury?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired. ‘If so…’

  ‘Yes, of course it’s the same! And… and William Barnes was born at a place called Rushay, the other side of Blandford, miles from here. And his statue is in Dorchester churchyard. There’s nothing about him round here.’

  Mrs. Bradley took out a small address book, and wrote Rushay.

  ‘Thank you so much, Mrs. Battle,’ she said carelessly, putting the book away. The woman was obviously startled.

  ‘Battle?… Oh, you mean the people who used to live here! I… did you know them at all?’

  ‘I knew of Battle the painter, of course,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘I assumed, from your manner and appearance, that you were his wife… or perhaps (forgive me!) his widow.’ His disappearance was a great loss to art. The police, I am credibly informed, are looking into it again. But, of course, they will have been here before us.’

  ‘The police?’ said the woman. ‘Oh, but I could tell them nothing about David! They would have to go to the son, young David Battle. Not that he would know any more than I do. I wonder…?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs. Battle?’

  ‘But I’m not Mrs. Battle!’ cried the woman. ‘And I tell you I know nothing of David’s affairs. And I’m afraid I must ask you to go. My husband will be home at any moment. If you want to see David—the son, I mean, of course—he lives in Cuchester now. I don’t know the address, but perhaps you could ask at the Post Office.’

  ‘You were asking whether we were returning by way of the village,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Yes, we are.’

  ‘Oh, yes, well…’ She hesitated and then plunged. ‘Would you post a letter for me there? You’ll see the Post Office. Just the village shop.’

  ‘Most certainly we will post your letter,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘It must be a great disadvantage to be so far from the village unless you have a car.’

  ‘We have a car. My husband is using it. Thank you so much. ’

  She went back into the house, and was gone for some time.

  ‘Writing the letter, I should think,’ said Laura, abandoning her inspection of the engine and taking the driver’s seat once more. The woman came out with the letter and Mrs. Bradley and Laura drove away.

  ‘Well!’ said Laura, as the car went slowly downhill towards Newcombe Soulbury village. ‘And what do we make of her, I wonder?’

  ‘It is too early to be certain,’ Mrs. Bradley replied, ‘but I should not be surprised if I were right, and that she is the older David Battle’s second wife, and that he has not, in the sense that we understand it, “disappeared” at all, but has merely gone underground for his own purposes. And I am truly sorry to disappoint you again, but I have a strong feeling that the police have been there before us, that they have alarmed the Battles, and that the letter we are to post in Newcombe Soulbury contains information relating to our visit. And now we will try Slepe Rock.’

  Once they had turned off the main road, their route lay among hills. Great, round-headed slopes lay on either side of the way and rose to meet the car as it headed towards the sea.

  Slepe Rock itself was on the seaward side of the village of Slepe, a straggling little place with a poor-looking bungalow or two on its outskirts, some untidy cottages, a house turned into a shop, and a large garage. Laura had seen nothing of the village on her hill-track pilgrimage to Slepe, but had passed through it on the return journey in the car.

  Beyond the village was the bay (once, as George had surmised, a smuggler’s hole), some limestone caves, a wash of creaming water, like teeth, breaking the surface of the sea, a semi-circle of cliff, a coastguard’s hut, and, just where the beach widened to include, between pebbles and backwash, a strip of dirty sand, the refreshment shack of which they were in search.

  ‘Not much future in this,’ said Laura decidedly. She regarded Slepe Rock with disfavour. ‘I enjoyed my walk over the hills, but, seen from this angle, Slepe Rock is a beastly little place! It’s like Lulworth Cove gone hellish. Why should anyone want to live here?—or wasn’t it like this when the disappearing Bulstrode lived here?’

  It was a question which Mrs. Bradley could not answer.

  ‘The cottage must have been near the sea,’ she observed, ‘if George’s report is correct, and I have no doubt whatever that it is.’ She surveyed Slepe with a non-committal eye, and added, ‘I think, child, that we ought to put up at the hotel. I wish your David Gavin were here with us. A young inspector of police could extract more information from a barmaid in the space of a quarter of an hour than you or I would be likely to get in a year and a half.’

  ‘O’Hara and Gascoigne,’ said Laura, quickly. ‘They’d love to help, and they can’t be doing anything important, and, after all, they got us into this!’

  ‘An excellent idea,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘but I have doubts about Mr. O’Hara. I don’t want him to run into danger on our account.’

  ‘He wouldn’t mind danger,’ said Laura, ‘and, after all, it’s because of him that we’re going to all this trouble.’

  ‘True,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. Gascoigne, however, came alone, explaining that his cousin had gone over to Ireland to a wedding, but would be coming back later and would join them then. He asked what he could do to help the enquiry.

  ‘We want to find out,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘all that we can about the house which used to exist on the site of that shack beside the pull-in for coaches. We want to know why the house was taken down, who lived there, what happened to him, and we need any other information which happens to come to light. You shall pursue boatmen and compliment barmaids. You shall indulge in friendly chat with the hotel manager and pass the time of day with the men who work at the pull-in for coaches.’

  The god-like Gascoigne promised to do his best, and Laura announced her intention of keeping a close watch on the hotel guests.

  ‘You never know,’ she said. ‘It won’t take the villain of the piece very long to find out that we’re on his track, and he might come here to keep an eye on us.’

  ‘But we don’t know for certain that there is a villain, do we?’ Gascoigne enquired.

  ‘Well, there must be,’ said Laura bluntly, ‘or Mrs. Bradley wouldn’t be here wasting her time.’

  Chapter Nine

  —«♦»—

  ‘And at twelve o’clock the young man met the princess going to the bath…’

  Ibid. (The Golden Bird)

  « ^ »

  So Mrs. Bradley, Laura and Gascoigne booked rooms at Slepe, and on the day following Gascoigne’s admission to their circle, Laura got up early in the morning and went down to the beach to bathe. The tide was coming in, and bathing was comparatively safe. She took off pullover, shirt, slacks, socks and vest behind rocks, and, in the one-piece sea-green bathing costume she had put on underneath the rest of her clothing, she went cautiously seawards, wearing her rope-soled shoes.

  She placed shoes and towel upon a rock which, she deduced, the sea would not reach until after she had finished her dip, and waded into the water.

  The sea was grey and uninviting. The tide came crosswise, from the east, into the opening, and the undercurrent was strong.

  Laura, who had been able to swim since she was six, treated unknown waters with respect. Having swum, keeping level with the shore, whilst she tested the idiosyncrasies of the locality, she at last struck out for the caves on the eastern side of the bay.

  The water grew deep and seemed warmer. The undertow was noticeable, but did not drag sufficiently, she thought, to be dangerous. In less time than she had allowed she was out of deep water and was wading towards an opening in the rocks.

  It was a most fascinating cave. So much was soon apparent.

  The sand, which, opposite the pull-in, seemed dirty and indeterminate, here was firm and hard. Not much of it was left uncovered, for the tide was coming in fast. Laura would have liked to loiter and explore, but beyond establishing the fact that on the left side as she went in there was a long ledge of slippery rock which would, at a pinch, make a path to the back of the cave, she did not wait or linger for fear of the tide. She promised herself, however, a complete exploration of the cave when conditions were good.

  She chose the easy way back. This was to swim with the full run of the incoming tide and let it take her across the bay.

  So crosswise did the tide set that her lazy manœuvres took her across to the opposite side and much farther west than the spit of sand from which she had entered the water.

  She accepted these conditions, and was brought up opposite a cliff-fall before which some great blocks of limestone had fallen to form great rocks. Even at low tide the water scarcely abandoned them, and they were overgrown with moss-like, slippery weed and small, hard, strongly-adhering shells.

  Laura had no intention of making her way barefoot over such stuff to reach her clothes, so, on gaining the rocks, she sat in the water and rested for half a minute, and then set to work to swim round, level with the shore, until she came to her shoes and her towel.

  She was within twenty yards of these objectives when a boy on the beach began throwing stones into the sea. He was a lad of about seventeen, and Laura was not aware of him except vaguely until a fairly heavy pebble landed half a yard in front of her. She called out. The boy continued, without, apparently, having noticed her, to hurl considerable numbers of pebbles into the water, most of them fairly heavy.

  Finding remonstrance useless, Laura, who was a person of action and short temper, duck-dived, gathered pebbles, and, finding bottom, returned the compliment with all her strength and skill. The third pebble, to her satisfaction, found its billet. The boy yelled, and put his hands to his stomach.

  ‘Now, then!’ called Laura. ‘Lay off! I’m coming in.’

  To her intense fury, the boy, his face like that of a demon, called out and began to pelt her. Hoping that an unlucky missile would not hit her on the head, she still swam in. Then she gathered a handful of pebbles, and soon a brisk battle was in progress. To Laura’s satisfaction her aim was considerably better than that of the enemy, whom she now saw as a chunky but undeveloped boy with an unathletic body and rather a large head. When he saw that he could not defeat or frighten her he gave up throwing pebbles and took to flight. Laura, whose blood was up, followed him as quickly as she could on the shifting pebbles, but he had too good a start, and she did not catch him.

  She went back and dressed. To her great surprise and annoyance, the boy, accompanied by a tall, grey-haired man, came into the hotel dining-room just as she was finishing her breakfast.

  She put down her table-napkin beside her plate, got up, and went over to the table at which the boy was seated.

  ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘what do you mean by throwing stones at me while I was in the water this morning?’

  ‘I didn’t know I should hit you with the stones,’ muttered the boy. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You didn’t hit me with the stones or with anything else,’ responded Laura. ‘I can only imagine you are not quite right in the head.’

  ‘Which same head,’ said Gascoigne, when Laura had returned to her own table and had given an account of the matter, ‘it will give me great pleasure to twist off his neck if I catch him annoying you, or anybody else, in that way.’ He looked across at the boy and scowled.

  The boy gave him a venomous glance, dropped his eyes, muttered something under his breath, and returned to his breakfast. The grey-haired man leaned forward and talked to him earnestly and at some length. Neither of them glanced again towards Mrs. Bradley’s table.

  ‘I wonder why he did it?’ said Mrs. Bradley thoughtfully. ‘The boy, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I expect he’s just a lout,’ said Laura shortly. ‘It’s a nuisance he’s staying in the hotel. Still, I shall be ready for him next time if he tries any more of his tricks.’

  After breakfast the grey-haired man came into the lounge where Laura was reading the paper, and apologized for the behaviour of the boy.

  ‘Ivor is rather undisciplined, I am afraid,’ he added, smiling. ‘He is not my son, of course, but I have spoken severely to him, and I don’t think he will behave like that again.’

  ‘He’d better not,’ said Laura, very shortly. The man lingered, but Laura returned to her newspaper, and, after a moment, he bowed and walked away.

  Laura was fond of swimming, and although the bay was in most ways unattractive and, at some states of the tide, inclined to be dangerous, she went in with Gascoigne in the middle of the morning, while Mrs. Bradley, armed with her shapeless knitting, sat high up on the beach on a flat rock backed by the cliff and watched them.

  ‘Did you ever learn to swim?’ enquired Laura, coming up out of the water at the turn of the tide and seating herself at Mrs. Bradley’s feet.

  ‘Yes, child. Once I swam the Hellespont, in emulation of Lord Byron and to the surprise of the Turkish authorities.’

  ‘Did you really? I say, tell us about it!’ said Gascoigne. ‘Did you do it for a bet, or what?’

  ‘I did that I did in envy of great Caesar,’ Mrs. Bradley simply replied ; and from this statement she refused to depart, neither would she add one jot or tittle to it.

  Laura stared out to sea, and then swung round on Gascoigne.

  ‘Gerry, I’m going to climb the hills and find the hole where my smugglers’ cave comes out.’

  ‘Do you possess a smugglers’ cave?’

  ‘Of course I do! I found it this morning, before that little beast pelted me with stones. Come on! I’ll race you getting dressed.’

  She won this contest, and came out from behind rocks to find that Mrs. Bradley had rolled up her knitting in readiness to accompany them.

  There was a path from the hotel garden which came out on to the slope of the hill. They followed this path through a little white-painted gate and climbed upwards until they came out at the top of a green-turfed, round-headed Down which broke away to steep cliffs, clean and white, which dropped to the creaming and sullen sea.

  ‘Now, the cave should come out somewhere here,’ said Laura beginning to cast around. ‘It comes from the edge of the bay, but I don’t suppose it goes straight up, do you? I mean, you couldn’t get smuggled goods up a sheer perpendicular face.’

  ‘Probably screened by bushes,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Are there any bushes up here?’

  So far as the eye could reach, there were none at all.

  ‘Well, the mouth is almost bound to be hidden in some way, I suppose,’ agreed Laura. ‘We must just hunt about until we find it.’

  But although they hunted until lunch-time, they found nothing which could reward them. Mrs. Bradley did not join in the search. She had brought her knitting and spent the time in studying the sea and the sky from a perch she had found for herself where a dip in the turf gave an uncomfortable but adequate seat.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25