Inspector Stoddart's Most Famous Cases. Annie Haynes
gazing from the black and white raftered homesteads standing back in the fields to the cottages fringing the roadside, with their thatched roofs and gay little gardens in front, just now bright with purple lilac and golden laburnum, pink and white may, looking like gigantic rose-bushes, and pink flowering currants.
In the middle of the village the church stood on a hill, a little back from the street, its rustic lich-gate at the end of a slanting road.
Hilary looked at it wistfully. Her godfather was right.
"It is one of the prettiest churchyards I have ever seen. I wish Dad had been buried here instead of in that great London cemetery."
"Don't suppose he would care twopence where he was buried," Miss Lavinia remarked unsympathetically. "I am sure I don't. In fact I have no fancy for being buried at all if you come to that."
Hilary ignored the interruption.
"I should like to see Lady Skrine's grave before we go back."
As she spoke, the car stopped. The cottage was, apparently, surrounded by a high hedge concealing a brick wall from sight. The man got down and, unlocking the high wooden gate, held it open invitingly.
"I'm afraid Fee won't like this," Hilary sighed softly, and passed in. "He is so fond of looking at the passers-by. Still," brightening up, "the garden will be so good for him, and in the summer we shall be able to wheel his chair to the gate."
"Yes, I am sorry for the boy, taken from all his interests. But I suppose it had to be and he will get used to it as everybody else has to."
The garden was a tangle of colour. Flowering trees concealed the wall from sight; the lawn, deliciously green and fresh, was quite the right size for tennis or croquet, as Hilary remarked. There was a rustic porch covered with sweet-briar and red ramblers which presently would be a riot of brilliance. The cottage itself was a quaint, raftered, irregularly roofed little building.
The chauffeur had handed the key to Hilary. It turned with some difficulty as though it had not been used for some time. They stepped into a wide, low hall, evidently extending the whole width of the house, since, opposite to them there was a glass door opening on to the back garden. Skrine had told Hilary that the house was partly furnished, but its aspect was rather a surprise to her. Here, in the hall, there were a couple of old chests and an oak settle that would have made an antiquary's mouth water.
On the high wooden mantelpiece there were tall brass candlesticks. The rugs before the fireplace were old and ragged, but Miss Lavinia calculated rapidly that, with the expenditure of a few pounds on cushions and curtains and a few rugs which could be brought from Park Road, a very charming and habitable lounge would be made.
Hilary opened the door nearest to the front. Then she gave a little gasp of amazement, for a little old woman who had been sitting by the window got up and came towards her. She was a pleasant-faced, robin-breasted little person, and she dropped a funny, old-fashioned curtsy as Hilary looked at her.
"Miss Bastow—I am Miller, Sir Felix's old nurse, miss. Sir Felix bade me be here to meet you and show you round, and do anything I could for you. I should have had the door open, but Sir Felix gave the key to the chauffeur and I had to come in at the back. I hope you will excuse me, miss. I have a bit of lunch ready in the dining-room, those being Sir Felix's orders."
Miss Lavinia entered in time to catch the last sentence.
"Really now, I call that very sensible of Sir Felix," she cried heartily. "I hate those snacks in the train—always seem to leave me more hungry than when I began. Where is this lunch?"
"This way, ma'am."
Miller took them across the hall to a room looking on to the garden at the back. Here they found a dainty lunch awaiting them—a chicken, a delicious-looking salad, a slice of Stilton, a big dish of hothouse fruit, grapes and peaches, a bottle of Burgundy.
"Enough to make one's mouth water," Miss Lavinia remarked as she took the chair opposite Hilary's. "Come, don't say you can't eat," as Hilary made no attempt to take up her knife and fork.
"But indeed I can't," Hilary said, leaning back in her chair. "I made a good lunch in the train, Aunt Lavinia, whatever you did."
"Well, I have no scruples about a second when I can get it," Miss Lavinia said, attacking the chicken. "This house has been empty for some time, I take it, Mrs. Miller?"
"Three months, ma'am. A Mrs. Dawson and her sister, Mrs. Clowes, lived here till Mrs. Dawson died, then Mrs. Clowes didn't care about living here alone. I did hear that she had gone abroad."
"Sensible person!" commended Miss Lavinia between her mouthfuls. "How any sane person can live in England all the year round I don't know! What sort of society do you get here, Mrs. Miller? I hope Miss Bastow will be able to make some friends."
Mrs. Miller looked a little dubious.
"Well, there is old Dr. Grafton, ma'am. He has a daughter, but she is married, so she is only here sometimes. Then there is the vicar; he is getting on in years and has to keep—"
"A curate," finished Miss Lavinia with an air of triumph. "Well, that is better than nothing. What is he like, Mrs. Miller—the curate, I mean?"
Mrs. Miller hesitated. "Well, he is very bald-headed, ma'am, and wears spectacles. He keeps silkworms—"
"Good gracious! What for?"
"Well, I don't know, ma'am—I suppose as pets."
"Pets! Why, even my archdeacon never got lower than cats. He sounds pretty deadly, but with a car one can get more variety than was possible in my young days," concluded Miss Lavinia.
There was really little to be done in the house: the decorations were comparatively fresh, and the house itself and the furniture were alike pretty in a quaint, old-world fashion.
Miss Lavinia decided that Hilary and Fee would need to bring little down but their own personal belongings. They had finished their inspection a good half-hour before it was time to start back to the station, and Miss Lavinia raised no objection when Hilary suggested going across to the churchyard to look at Lady Skrine's grave.
The churchyard was, as Sir Felix had said, very beautiful.
Passing through the lich-gate, the churchyard slanted up to the church itself, an old Norman structure that had been used as a stronghold by Cromwell's soldiers, and still bore traces of their tenancy in the bare places on the roof, from which the lead had been stripped to make bullets, the rusty hooks that had been driven into the old walls, to which the impious soldiers had tethered their horses, and the great stone on which tradition said they had sharpened their swords.
Lady Skrine's tomb was on the west side. A tall white cross was inscribed:
In memory of Eleanor Henrietta, the beloved and devoted wife of Felix Skrine. Until death doth us join.
A marble curb marked out a double space and a large cross of lilies lay in the middle.
As Hilary bent forward to look at it, a voice close at hand made her start:
"It is my Lady Skrine's grave, ladies. Them flowers is put there every day by Sir Felix's orders," a quavering voice said behind her.
She turned sharply. An old man leaning on two sticks stood on the path behind.
"William Johnson, over forty years clerk of this parish, ladies," he said, making a feeble attempt to raise one of his sticks to his head, "and father o' young William what be clerk now. If there is aught you ladies want to know—"
"I don't think so, thank you," Miss Lavinia said briskly. "We are just taking a look round. And so you say Sir Felix has fresh flowers put on his wife's grave every day?"
"Every day as ever is, ma'am. His man has the orders for it. And every morning when Sir Felix is in these parts he comes himself. That little road over there"—pointing to the other side—"it leads into the private gate into the Hall grounds, and it is Sir Felix and his man that have made it."
They looked