British Mysteries Collection: 7 Novels & Detective Story. Ethel Lina White
search of the pantry, store-room, larder, boot-closet, and the other offices.
At the end of the passage, she turned into a darker alley, where the coal-cellars and wood-house were located. She flashed her light over each recess, stooping behind dusty sacks and creeping into corners.
"What d' you expect to find?" asked Mrs. Oates. "A nice young man?"
Her grin faded, however, as Helen paused before a locked door.
"There's one place as you, nor no one else, will ever get into," she said grimly. "If the luny gets inside there, I'll say good luck to him."
"Why?" asked Helen. "What is it?"
"The wine-cellar—and the Professor keeps the key. It's the nearest you'll ever get to it."
Helen, who was a total abstainer, through force of circumstances, realised that, since she had been at the Summit, no intoxicant had been served with the meals.
"Are they all teetotallers here?" she asked.
"There's nothing to hinder the Professor having his glass," said Mrs. Oates, "seeing as he keeps the key. But Oates and the young gentlemen have got to go to the Bull for their drop of tiddley. And Mr. Rice is the only one as has ever asked me if I have a mouth."
"What a shame not to allow you beer, with all your heavy work," sympathised Helen.
"I get beer-money," admitted Mrs. Oates. "Miss Warren's got a bee in her bonnet about no drink served in the house. But she's like the Professor, no trouble so long as you leave her with her books. She's not mean—only you mustn't do a thing what's worth doing. That's her."
That was exactly how Miss Warren had struck Helen—a Grey studious negation.
Mrs. Oates relieved her feelings by kicking the cellar door, before they turned away.
"I've promised myself one thing," she said solemnly. "It's this: if ever I come across the key of this cellar, there'll be a bottle short."
"And the fairies will have drunk it, I suppose?" asked Helen. "Come back to the fire. I've something thrilling to tell you."
When they were back in the kitchen, however, Mrs. Oates began to chuckle.
"You've something to tell me. Well, I've something to show you. Look at these."
She opened one of the cupboards in the dresser, and pointed to a line of empty bottles.
"What Mr. Rice calls 'dead men.' Many's the bottle of gin or stout he's brought back from the Bull."
"He's kind," admitted Helen. "There's something about him. Pity he's such a rotter."
"He's not as black as he's painted," said Mrs. Oates.
"He was sent down from his school in Oxford for mucking about with a girl. But he told me, one night, as he was more sinned against than sinning. He's not really partial to girls."
"But he flirts with Mrs. Newton."
"Just his fun. When she says 'A,' he says 'B.' That's all."
Helen laughed as she looked into the glowing heart of the fire. Unknown to her, fresh cracks had been started in the walls of her fortress. As she stroked the ginger cat, who responded with a startling rumble, her recent experience seemed very remote.
"I promised you a tale," she said. "Well—'believe me or believe me not'—when I was coming through the plantation, I met—the strangler."
It was certain that she did not believe her own story, although she exaggerated the details, in order to impress Mrs. Oates. It was such a thin-spun theme—a man hiding behind a tree, with no sequel to prove a dark motive.
She was not the only one to be incredulous. In a cottage half-way up the hill-side, a dark-eyed girl was looking at herself in a small mirror, spotted with damp. Her face was rosy from moist mountain air, and her expression was eager and rebellious.
Here was one who welcomed life with both hands. She perched a scarlet hand-knitted beret at a perilous angle on her short black hair, powdered her cheeks, and added unnecessary lip-stick to her moist red lips, humming, as an accompaniment to her actions.
As she looked around the small room, with the low bulging white plaster ceiling and cracked walls, the limp muslin curtain before the shuttered window, her desire grew. She told herself that she was sick of confinement and the cheesy smell of indoors. She had stayed in, night after night, until she was fed up, and willing to chance any hypothetical criminal. She yearned for the cheery bar of the Bull, with a young man or two, a glass of cider, and the magic of the wireless.
She buttoned up her red leather coat and put on Wellington boots, before her stealthy descent down the creaking stairs. When she slipped through the cottage door her heart beat faster, but only with excitement. She was as used to the narrow, pitchy lane, which dropped down precipitously to the valley, as a Londoner is to Piccadilly. Familiarity with loneliness had robbed it of any terror, just as immunity from attack had resulted in perfect nerve. Without fear or foreboding, she hurried down the stony hillside, in sure-footed haste.
When she reached the plantation, she felt that she had nearly reached the goal of her desire. A bare mile of level ground separated her from the bar of the Bull. Civilisation was represented by the Summit, which was so close to her that she could hear a broadcast of Jack Hylton's band.
Like most Welsh girls, she had a true ear and a musical voice. She took up the tune, jumbling the words, but singing with the passionate exaltation due to a revivalist hymn.
"Love is the sweetest thing.
No bird upon the wing"
The rain drove down upon her face, in steady slanting skeins, through the partial screen of the larches, and the hard ground under her feet was growing slimed, in spite of its carpet of spines. Happy, healthy, and unwise, she hurried to meet the future. Careless of weather, and one with the elements, she sang her way through the wood—youth at its peak.
Her sight was excellent, so that she could distinguish the lane of single trees, where the plantation thinned towards its end. But her imagination was more blunted than Helen's, so that she did notice that one of the trees was apparently rootless, for it shifted behind the trunks of its fellows.
Had she remarked it, she would have distrusted the evidence of her eyes. Common sense told her that trees did not move from their stations. So she hurried on, and sang yet louder.
"I only pray that life may bring
Love's sweet story to you."
When she reached the last tree, it suddenly changed into a man. Its branches were clutching arms. But still she did not believe.
For she knew that these things do not happen.
CHAPTER IV. ANCIENT LIGHTS
"The tree moved," declared Helen, finishing her story, in the safety of the kitchen. "And—to my horror—I saw that it was a man. He was waiting there, like a tiger ready to spring on his prey."
"Go on." Mrs. Oates was openly derisive. "I've seen that tree, myself. Often seen him, I have, waiting for Ceridwen, when she used to work here. And was never the same tree twice."
"Ceridwen?" repeated Helen.
"Yes. She lives in a cottage half-way up the hill. A pretty girl, but she would mix her cloths. Old Lady Warren couldn't abide her. She said as how her feet smelt, and when she dusted under her bed, her ladyship used to wait for her, with her stick, until she crawled out, so as to fetch her a clout on the head."
Helen burst out laughing. Life might ignore her, but she remained acutely conscious and appreciative of the eternal comedy.
"The old darling gets better and better," she declared. "I wish you'd give me the job