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 was a fool. These elderly men are inclined to be pig-headed. 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. It was sad though. His wife was broken-hearted."
"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."
Chapter 4
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, "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 Easterfield slowly shook his head.
Bridget Conway said, "We shouldn't be likely to hear of things like that."
Luke took it up almost before she finished talking: "No doubt about it, I've got to search in lower social spheres to get what I want. I'll be off to the vicarage first and see what I can get there. After there perhaps a walk to the - Seven Stars, did you say? And what about the small boy of unpleasant habits? Did he leave any sorrowing relatives?"
"Mrs. Pierce keeps a tobacco and paper shop in High Street."
"That," said Luke, "is nothing less than providential. Well, I'll be on my way."
With a swift, graceful movement, Bridget moved from the window. "I think," she said, I'll come with you, if you don't mind."
"Of course not." He said it as heartily as possible, but he wondered if she had noticed that, just for a moment, he had been taken aback. It would have been easier for him to tackle an elderly antiquarian clergyman without an alert, discerning intelligence by his side. "Oh, well," he thought to himself. "It's up to me to do my stuff convincingly."
Bridget said, "Will you just wait, Luke, whilst 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! Couldn't anyone stop him?"
Bridget answered, "An Englishman's house is his castle - literally so in Gordon's case! He adores it."
Conscious that the remark was in bad taste, he said,
"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.
Luke was relieved to find that Mr. Wake's special interest was Roman remains. He confessed gently that he knew very little of medieval folklore and witchcraft. He mentioned the existence of certain items in the history of Wychwood, offered to take Luke to the particular ledge of hill where it was said the witches' Sabbaths had been held, but expressed himself regretful that he could add no special information of his own.
