‘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 handle 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, while I change my shoes?’
Luke—the Christian name uttered so easily gave him a queer warm feeling. And yet 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? In God’s name what does she think?’
Queer that that had not worried him beforehand. Jimmy’s cousin had just been a convenient abstraction—a lay figure. He had hardly visualized her, just accepted his friend’s dictum that ‘Bridget would be all right.’
He had thought of her—if he had thought of her at all—as a little blonde 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.
She said smiling:
‘You need me to show you the way.’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ he answered punctiliously.
And wondered if he had imagined a sudden swiftly passing ironic smile.
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, yet unable to control his tongue, 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 towards 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.
Inwardly much relieved, Luke expressed himself as somewhat disappointed, and then plunged into inquiries as to death-bed superstitions.
Mr Wake shook his head gently.
‘I am afraid I should be the last person to know about those. My parishioners would be careful to keep anything unorthodox from my ears.’
‘That’s so, of course.’
‘But I’ve no doubt, all the same, there is a lot of superstition still rife. These village communities are very backward.’
Luke plunged boldly.
‘I’ve been asking Miss Conway for a list of all the recent deaths she could remember. I thought I might get at something that way. I suppose you could supply me with a list, so that I could pick out the likelies.’
‘Yes—yes—that could be managed. Giles, our sexton, a good fellow but sadly deaf, could help you there. Let me see now. There have been a good many—a good many—a treacherous spring and a hard winter behind it—and then a good many accidents—quite a cycle of bad luck there seems to have been.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Luke, ‘a cycle of bad luck is attributed to the presence of a particular person.’
‘Yes, yes. The old story of Jonah. But I do not think there have been any strangers here—nobody, that is to say, outstanding in any way, and I’ve certainly never heard any rumour of such a feeling—but then again, as I said, perhaps I shouldn’t. Now let me see—quite recently we have had Dr Humbleby and poor Lavinia Pinkerton—a fine man, Dr Humbleby—’
Bridget put in:
‘Mr Fitzwilliam knows friends of his.’
‘Do you indeed? Very sad. His loss will be much felt. A man with many friends.’
‘But surely a man with some enemies too,’ said Luke. ‘I’m only going by what I’ve heard my friends say,’ he went on hastily.
Mr Wake sighed.
‘A man who spoke his mind—and a man who wasn’t always very tactful, shall we say—’ he shook his head. ‘It does get people’s backs up. But he was greatly beloved among the poorer classes.’
Luke said carelessly:
‘You know I always feel that one of the most unpalatable facts to be faced in life, is the fact that every death that occurs means a gain to someone—I don’t mean only financially.’
The vicar nodded thoughtfully.
‘I see your meaning, yes. We read in an obituary notice that a man is regretted by everybody, but that can only be true very rarely I fear. In Dr Humbleby’s