The dog howled pitifully as the blade went home between its ribs and Kenyon felt almost worse about it than when he had had to levy toll on the defenceless farmers, but it was absolutely necessary, and as he mounted again he felt that he had had a lucky escape from being badly mauled.
'Orford could not be far now,' he thought, and the last few miles of the way thither, he began to be more than ever satisfied that Gregory was right about Ann's safety. The scattered farms grew more infrequent, alternating with long stretches of beautiful but desolate heath where little woods of pine and birch, or wide stretches of golden flowering gorse, broke the monotony of the rolling sweep of heather. A land that had known the imprint of the hand of man for centuries but one with which he had dealt kindly, never settling in his hordes to blacken it with smoke and grime. As the road narrowed Kenyon felt that in normal times one would not see a human being in a three mile stretch, the way leading nowhere but to Orford and the sea. The last mile or so lay downhill through narrow twisting lanes and there was the little town sleeping in the sunshine as it had slept for centuries, cut off on the north by the great sweep of the Aide and on the south by the Butley from intercourse with its neighbours, its only method of communication the solitary inland road. He noted that it was even separated from the sea by a strip of water which he remembered to be the River Ore; a mile of marshland had to be crossed before the beach could be reached, and there no stretches of fair golden sand lay spread to attract the tripper, but a hard steeply shelving foreshore where the waves broke monotonously upon the pebbles. Ipswich might be barely a hundred miles from London and its population of eighty thousand people had enjoyed, up to a month ago, all the amenities of modern civilisation, but Orford, although only a further sixteen miles from the metropolis, was literally in the back of the beyond and the life of its inhabitants differed little in essentials from that of their predecessors two hundred years before. In the days of the Flemish weavers it had been a prosperous little port now it was only a village. A few crooked streets with rambling houses and fishermen's., cottages clustered about the great Norman Church; yet even that relic of bygone splendour was in partial ruin, the transepts fallen away, the main aisle only kept watertight for a limited number of parishioners. No railway station linked it with modern life, the nearest being at Wickham Market, seven miles away and only a branch line. Where in all England could Ann live more securely at such a time? At the first houses four men with staves, and brassards on their arms, stopped him but one of them knew Ann so Kenyon was allowed to pass, having learnt from them that the Reverend Timothy Croome was not the incumbent of the parish as he had supposed, but lived retired at Fenn Farm some way outside the town. The shuttered shops in the straggling square seemed no more strange than on a normal Sunday and turning to the right he took the road beneath the great eight sided single tower of the Castle, which dominates the coast for miles around, out into the open country once more. After a little it faded almost to a track running parallel to the sea, and passing two small farms half a mile or so apart, he came to a solitary house which he knew must be his destination.
The track ended there and he propped his bicycle against the ramshackle gate, noting as he did so from the hill upon which the place was set, the broad mud flats of the Butley which cut it off so securely from the south and west. For a second he wondered if Ann would run out when she saw him, and if they would kiss, but his thoughts were chilled by the bleak appearance of the house. Its peeling paint and dilapidated exterior suggested straitened circumstances and, set in this desolate spot between the wind and sea and sky, the thought of easterly gales beating upon its jimcrack doors and windows leapt to his mind, and how cheerless the place must be when the grey mists crept up to it from the marshes in the winter.
He paused for a moment irresolute beneath the scanty foliage of a tree warped by the constant pressure of the wind. The house was silent as the grave; silent with a queer sinister silence that seemed to catch at Kenyon's heart. Why were there none of the little noises that spoke of peaceful habitation? Why no questioning bark there should at least have been a dog. The Iron Gate clanged behind him with a dismal sound, yet no inquiring face appeared at the windows.
'Ann!' he bellowed, 'Ann!' but no small figure appeared to greet him. The house remained cold, a cheerless example of Edwardian architecture, grimly foreboding in its continued silence.
With a set face Kenyon hurried up the path. Something was wrong, he knew it with a horrible certainty as he pressed the bell in the absurd ornate porch which gave the place the air of a suburban villa that had gone a wandering. Jarringly the peal shrilled through the house but no footsteps sounded in the hall. He pressed again but no stir or movement broke the following silence, now weighing like a cloak of dread upon his troubled mind.
He left the porch, stepped back to stare up at the windows and noticed for the first time that the curtains were drawn. Perhaps the place had been abandoned, yet somehow he did not feel that it had, a second sense seemed to tell him that there were people in the house. In search of another entrance he walked swiftly round the corner and coming at once upon an open window, thrust it up, pushed back the curtains, and peered into the dim recesses of the room.
. The furniture was in keeping with the house, an Edwardian mahogany dining room suite, heavy and tasteless. The remains of a meal lay spread upon the table, but Kenyon's thoughts were not upon the furnishings.
An elderly woman lay stretched on her face in the doorway, she was quite still dead undoubtedly, and the dark matted patch in her grey hair showed that she had been struck down from behind. By the fireplace lay another huddled form, black clad, a clergyman his white collar proclaimed the fact but that was stained with blood, and the head hung back at a queer unnatural angle. Horrified but fascinated, Kenyon could not drag his eyes away from the white face and the red gash beneath for the man's throat had been slit from ear to ear.
'Ann,' he called again, but his voice only came in a hoarse choking whisper, and still there was no answer.
20
A Beacon in the Darkness
For a moment Kenyon leant against the window sill, almost sick with the fear he now felt for Ann, then, with an effort he pulled himself together and scrambled inside.
He stooped for a moment over the prostrate clergyman although he had no hope that his eyes had deceived him. The man had been brutally and abominably done to death. Next he turned to the woman and found her too, stiff and cold. It seemed the work of a maniac; then Kenyon noted that, although the knives and forks on the table remained unused, there was not a scrap of food left in the dishes, and he knew that men driven desperate by acute hunger must have done the killing. Staggering slightly he stepped across the body of the woman to the door.
It opened on a narrow hallway. A hat rack showed him the position of the front entrance and two other doors stood on either side of it. He flung open the one on the right and poked his head into an ordinary country drawing room. Chintz covered chairs, a mantelpiece loaded with indifferent china, and a piano decorated with photographs. Closing it softly behind him from some instinctive reverence for the dead who lay so near he tried the other. That led to a small study, and a little pile of silver coins lying on the top of a cheap light oak roll top desk were evidence that the murderers had not broken in for money. Food was all that mattered. For a second Kenyon ran his eye along the shelves of worn books; most of them were on ancient coinage, evidently the dead man's hobby, and that seemed in some way to bring the tragedy nearer. Softly he closed the door.