Mr. Johnson subsided once more into the easy-chair from which he had
risen.
"This is most amazing!" he exclaimed. "A murder in the Great House only
twelve months ago!"
"It do seem most unaccountable, sir," the grocer ventured, "that you
never heard about it."
"I was abroad at the time and until a month or so ago," Mr. Johnson
explained, "and it is astonishing how you lose touch with things
altogether after a while. I sometimes didn't open an English newspaper
for a week at a time.--Well, well," he went on, "perhaps that's the
reason why they asked such an extraordinarily low rent for the house."
"It's a-many," the innkeeper observed, "who wouldn't live there rent
free--not that I'm saying that any educated person ought to take notice
of such," he added hastily. "It's a fine house and the gardens are
grand, and I only hope, sir, that you'll be comfortable and not be put
off, so to speak, by a thing that's passed and gone."
"And you say that the police have never even made an arrest," Mr.
Johnson asked incredulously. "Surely that's a very unusual thing in this
country?"
"Unusual it may be," the innkeeper admitted, "but a fact it is, all the
same. For weeks afterwards we had gentlemen from Scotland Yard almost
living in the place. One stayed here in this very inn and the questions
he did ask were surely ridiculous. But there wasn't one of them clever
enough to find out who killed Mr. Endacott."
The new tenant of the Great House finished his drink in silence and rose
to his feet.
"Well, gentlemen," he observed, "I strolled in here to make friends with
any of my new neighbours who might be around and make acquaintance with
the place, so to speak, but I certainly didn't expect to hear anything
like this."
"It's a bad start, I'm afraid, sir," the innkeeper regretted civilly,
"but you'd have been bound to have heard of it before long."
"Such a stir it did make," the grocer reflected. "Every morning and
every afternoon there was a fresh rumour, as you might say."
"But not a single arrest," Mr. Johnson repeated. "Most extraordinary!"
"I hope now that you know the worst as is to be told, sir," Rawson
ventured, "that you'll soon settle down here and like the
neighbourhood."
Mr. Johnson inclined his head gravely.
"I have no doubt that I shall," he declared. "In many respects the Great
House suits me perfectly. It is just the sort of garden I want to have,
the neighbourhood seems healthy, and it is not too far from the sea. I
wish you good afternoon, gentlemen!"
There was a little chorus of farewells. The new tenant took his
departure, swinging his stick and, though naturally a little thoughtful
after the news he had heard, there was nothing in his manner to indicate
that he intended to take it too seriously to heart. They watched him
from behind the muslin curtains until he opened the gate which led into
his gardens and disappeared.
"He do seem to me to have plenty of courage, and a proper man for the
neighbourhood," the innkeeper pronounced, wiping up his counter. "There
is a-many might have been struck all of a heap at being told what we had
to tell him."
"Any sort of tenant is better than none," the grocer sighed, "but a
family, I must confess, is what I was hoping for."
Rawson, as became his position, maintained a somewhat dubious attitude.
"I could wish," he observed, with a heavy frown, "that he had given us
some indication as to his previous occupation or station in life. His
coming in here and sitting down for a drink was friendly-like but not
exactly usual. To me he seemed scarcely the sort of man whom the Squire,
for instance, would be likely to take a fancy to."
"The Squire be a great gentleman," the grocer said reverently. "There
aren't many like him left in these parts. He's not likely to take up
with a stranger. Why should he?"
"Why, indeed?" Rawson assented. "Yet he seemed to take quite a fancy to
Mr. Endacott. Mr. Gregory, too, paid the young lady quite a lot of
attention."
"And no wonder," the innkeeper remarked. "She was a proper-looking young
lady. There ain't many in these parts could hold a candle to her for
looks. You're not very gay just now at the Hall, Mr. Rawson," he
continued.
The butler stifled a regretful sigh. Things at the Hall were a great
deal less gay than he was prepared to disclose.
"We're generally pretty quiet during the summer," he admitted. "The
Squire was never one for entertaining much before the shooting. I did
think that Mr. Gregory being at home might have made a little
difference, but he's due, they say, to start for foreign parts at any
moment.--Six o'clock, gentlemen. I wish you all good evening."
There was a simultaneous break-up of the little party. Rawson, ponderous
as ever and grey of complexion, notwithstanding his country life, first
made a dignified exit, and, walking a short way down the village street,
climbed the stile which led into the park. Mr. Craske crossed the street
and returned to the pleasant-looking, creeper-covered establishment
behind the long shop windows of which he and his father and grandfather
before him had dispensed groceries and gossip for the last hundred
years. Finally the young man, Fielding, took his silent departure,
mounting a motor bicycle which he had left leaning up against the wall.
He glanced at his watch and reflected for a few moments.
"Be going for a ride, Mr. Fielding?" the innkeeper, who had followed him
outside, enquired.
The young man looked up and down the sleepy sun-baked street, and
glanced at a signboard where the road forked.
"I may get as far as Norwich," he ruminated. "I'm wanting some new
flies."
"A pleasant ride and all this evening," the other observed. "Queer it do
seem these days to think of getting to Norwich and back afore dark. Them
things as you ride have made a power of difference in getting about."
The young man smiled.
"Twenty miles to Norwich," he remarked. "Forty minutes, taking it easy.
Yes, I think I shall run over there."
He swung on to his machine, which started at once, and in three quarters
of an hour he was writing out a telegram in a post office in Norwich.
Afterwards he made a pilgrimage to a sporting emporium in the main
street, and with the care of an expert selected a fresh assortment of
flies with which to tempt a particularly elusive but desirable trout.
Eight o'clock was striking as he passed once more through the village
street of Market Ballaston on his way back to his farmhouse lodgings. He
dismounted outside the Ballaston Arms and stood looking about him with
the air of one absorbing to the full the gentle atmosphere of peace,
beauty and rustic content.
At the end of the street, a row of houses, mostly of grey stone with
deep red tiles, opened out into the little market place, where an
ancient covered cross stood in the centre of a cobbled space. On a stone
trough three or four youths and two young women were seated in peaceful
and almost aggressive silence. Mr. Houghton, the bank manager, was
standing on the cool flagged pavement outside his neat little house,
smoking a cigarette and chatting with Foulds, the veterinary surgeon,
who had just driven up in his little two-seater car, whilst just across
the way, Mr. Craske's good-looking daughter had stepped out of the front
door to water the row of geraniums in the boxes before the windows. From
the Great House, set in somewhat severe isolation behind its encircling
red brick wall, came the clamorous summons of a dinner gong, and almost
immediately afterwards a similar invitation from the tinkling of Chinese
bells sounded from the Little House. The melody from the latter had
scarcely died away before, from the Hall, came the slow booming of the
alarm bell, rung nightly at the dinner hour.
The young man listened and into his sleepy eyes there crept a
speculative expression as they travelled beyond the village street,
beyond the park, up the great grass-bordered avenue towards the windows
of the Hall. It seemed almost as though he could see into the very
stately and undisturbed Jacobean dining room, see the three men who sat
together at the end of that desert of mahogany, frowned down upon by
lines of pictured ancestors, their slightest need anticipated by Rawson
and his well-trained subordinates, as though he could hear their languid
and stilted efforts at conversation, as though, perhaps, he could see
the ghosts behind their chairs. As though, when he swung round a moment
or two later, he could see into the more modest but still impressive
dining room of the Great House, where Mr. Peter Johnson sat alone,
before a far simpler repast, eating and drinking with a frown upon his
forehead, and lines about his mouth, no traces of which had appeared
during those more genial moments of his afternoon visit to the Ballaston
Arms; as though, turning still a little farther round, he could see even
into that quaint low dining room of the Little House, take note of the
invalid with golden hair and weary brown eyes, who lay upon her long
chair, drawn up by the side of the round table, the discontented but
earnest young woman who sat opposite to her, the harsh-featured maid,
their sole attendant.
In the end he sighed and abandoned his reflections. He entered the inn,
disturbing thereby Mr. Pank, the landlord, in the middle of his supper,
and drank a glass of gin and tonic. Then the quick explosions of his
bicycle disturbed once more the quiet, drowsy street, as he flashed
through the village on his homeward way.
* * * * *
Throughout the whole of that long summer day it had scarcely seemed
possible that there could be a more peaceful spot in the world than the
wide street, the cobbled market place, and the winding country lanes
which emptied themselves into the village of Market Ballaston. At three
o'clock on the following morning there was not only peace but silence,
absolute and complete. The two hundred and forty-three men, women and
children who made up its inhabitants, had passed into the land of
ghosts. Even the houses themselves, with their closed blinds and
sightless windows, breathed the very spirit of repose. The chiming of
the church clock, notwithstanding its silvery distinctness, seemed to
carry with it a note almost of apology to a sleeping world. Silence more
complete than ever followed the dying away of its last trembling note.
For some time not even an uneasy dog or a too eager denizen of the
farmyard ventured to disturb the moonlit pall of silence. Then came the
first sign of human movement.
The small postern gate set in the red brick wall which surrounded the
Great House was opened noiselessly and Peter Johnson stepped into the
lane. He stood there for a moment or two perfectly still, with the air
of a man listening--a hopeless task, it seemed, on such a night. Whilst
he listened, his eyes wandered up and down the street, away across the
churchyard and into the wood behind, past the steeple and over the
sleeping country to the horizon. It seemed, however, that if he watched
for any unusual sight or listened for any unusual sounds, both efforts
were in vain. After a few moments he took another step forward and, with
the postern gate still open, stood gazing thoughtfully and watchfully
over the medley of red-tiled roofs, up the great avenue beyond, to where
the imposing front of the Hall, with its long rows of uncurtained
windows, filled the background with a serene and brooding dignity. He
stood there perhaps for as long as five minutes, until he seemed to
become part of the dreaming landscape, a statue petrified by the
moonlight, the only living figure in that drama of repose, all the
geniality and kindliness drained somehow from his expression, a sinister
and watchful figure, alien and inimical.
Suddenly he seemed to stiffen. From the outside of a small wood
adjoining the Hall flashed a light--little more than a pin-prick of
fire, but vivid and distinct. Three times it flashed. Then it
disappeared. Peter Johnson, as silently as he had come, stepped back
and, vanishing through the postern gate, reëntered his own domains.