“Are you sure?” asked Marie-Christine appealingly.
“I can’t recall it, miss.”
When she left us, Marie-Christine said: “It’s odd that the Misses Tregorran hadn’t heard of it … and now Sally …”
We were a little deflated. I was wondering where we could go from here. The point of our visit was to find Ennis, whose surname we did not know, and now no one seemed to have heard of the village where he lived.
Marie-Christine said: “We’ll have to think what we are going to do. We’ll have to ask everyone. Someone will surely have heard of the place.”
After the meal, we went for a little walk. We crossed the moor and made our way to the Dancing Maidens.
Marie-Christine was right. There was a strange eeriness about the moor. We stood beside the maidens. They were the size of humans, and when one stood close, one could imagine their suddenly coming to life.
Marie-Christine shared this feeling.
She said: “I’m sure they could tell us where Meningarth is.”
We laughed. We said goodbye to the stone maidens and made our way back to the inn.
“After all,” said Marie-Christine, “we can’t expect to find everything at once.”
We had better luck in the morning when we met the landlord’s wife.
She greeted us warmly when we came downstairs. A delicious smell of frying bacon and coffee filled the inn.
“Good morning to ‘ee,” she said. “You be Miss Tremaston and friends of the Misses Tregorran. We are very happy to have ‘ee come to the Dancing Maidens.”
“We met the Misses Tregorran on the train,” I told her. “They were very kind.”
“They be nice ladies. I do the breakfasts myself. What would you like to eat?”
We decided on scrambled eggs with crisp bacon, which tasted as good as it smelt.
She was a garrulous woman, and in a short time she was telling us that she had been brought up in the inn, which had belonged to her father. “Jim … my husband … he took over and it was still my home. All my life I’ve lived at the Dancing Maidens.”
“You will know this place as well as anyone,” said Marie-Christine. “Perhaps you can tell us where Meningarth is?”
We were both watching her earnestly, and our hearts sank at the look of puzzlement in her face. Then she said: “Oh, you’d mean Mr. Masterman’s place. You must do. It’s Garth. Mind you, it was Meningarth at one time … but it hasn’t been called that for ten years or more.”
Marie-Christine was beaming at her.
“So now it is just called Garth!” she said encouragingly.
“That be so. I remember now. ‘Twas in the October gales … terrible gales we do get here October month. You should hear the wind sweeping across the moor. It whistles like the devil calling sinners from their graves, they say. It must be all of ten years ago. Terrible they were that year. We had damage at the inn. Meningarth had it worse … being more exposed like. It took the roof off of the place … tore up the gate and flung it a quarter of a mile away. It took months to put it right. The gate was finished. They had to put up a new one … and when it was up, it didn’t have Meningarth on it like the old one. They’d made a mistake and put just Garth. Nothing was done about it … and people stopped saying Meningarth. It was just plain Garth.”
“We used to have friends who knew the people there,” said Marie-Christine glibly.
“Oh … him … he keeps himself to himself. Him and his dog. Fond of music. Plays the violin or something.”
“That must be Ennis …” began Marie-Christine.
“Ennis Masterman … that be he.”
“We might call on him,” I said. “How do we get there?”
” Tis a tidy step from here. A good couple of miles, I’d say. Do you ladies ride a horse?”
“Yes,” we said eagerly.
“Well, we get a lot of call from people staying here for a horse. So we have one or two. We hire them out for the day mostly. We could suit you, I reckon. We’ve got a couple of nice little mares … not too frisky. They know the moor, too. It can be quite a tricky place.”
“You could direct us to Garth, I’m sure,” I said.
“Certainly I could. Well, fancy that. Who’d have thought of Ennis Masterman having young lady visitors, from London!”
We finished breakfast and went immediately to the stables. We saw the mares to which the landlady had referred. We said they would suit us beautifully and, with the landlady’s instructions, we were soon on our way.
“What triumph!” said Marie-Christine. “When she told us about the gate’s being destroyed, I could have hugged her. It explains why all those people didn’t know the place. Noelle, we are on our way.”
I was more subdued. Marie-Christine would not feel my emotions, naturally. Suppose our conjecture proved to be correct and I was going to meet the father whom I had never met before? On the other hand … suppose we were quite wrong, and were going to crash into someone’s private life?
My feelings were in a turmoil.
The landlady’s instructions were clear. We passed the little hamlet she had described. It was just a row of houses, a village store and a church. It was necessary to follow the directions very closely. I could see how easily one could lose oneself on the moor.
“If we are on the right track,” I said, “Garth should be behind that slight hillock over there.”
We had rounded the hillock, and there it was—a long grey stone building, lonely, rather stark and desolate.
We rode over to the gate. “Garth,” we both said aloud. “This is it.”
We dismounted and tied our horses to a post near the gate. We went through the gate to the piece of land in front of the house. It could hardly be called a garden. There were no flowers, only a few overgrown shrubs.
“Isn’t it exciting?” said Marie-Christine with a little shiver.
There was a knocker on the door. I lifted it and let it fall. It sounded very loud in the silence. We waited breathlessly. There was no response.
After a while I tried again.
“There’s no one here,” I said.
“He’s out. He lives here. That’s obvious. He’ll come sooner or later.”
“We’ll wait for a while and see if he does,” I said.
We walked down the path and out through the gate. There was a stone block nearby and we sat on this.
“Perhaps he’s gone away for days … for weeks,” I suggested.
“Oh no,” cried Marie-Christine. “I could not bear that. He’s gone to that little village we passed. He’d have to get stores, wouldn’t he? We’ll find him. This is just making it a little more difficult, that’s all.”
We waited for an hour, and just as I was going to suggest we must go, he came.
He was driving a pony and trap, and Marie-Christine must have been right when she had guessed that he had gone to the village for stores.
He pulled up in amazement when he saw us sitting on the boulder, and then he leaped out of the trap. He was tall and slim.
His face was pleasant rather than handsome. There was a gentleness about him which I noticed even in those first moments.
We went towards him, and I said: “I hope you don’t mind our calling. My name is Noelle Tremaston.”
The effect on him was instantaneous. His eyes were fixed on me, and he was trying hard to control his features. Then a flush came into his face. He said slowly: “You are Daisy’s daughter. I am glad you have come.”
“Yes,” I said. “I am Daisy’s daughter. And this is Mademoiselle du Carron. She has lived with me since she lost her family in the siege of Paris.”
He turned to Marie-Christine and said it was a pleasure to meet her.
“We found your address in my mother’s bureau,” I said.