Snow still lay in Deep Bottom. When they reached the lip of the hollow and looked down, they saw the drive disappear under it and rise again on the far side like a muddy ribbon.
“She be gone down a tidy piece,” said James. “Not above two foot now, I reckon, but happen thurr’ll be watter underneath. Happen us’d do better with sack over radiator, sir.”
Mandrake pulled up and James plunged out with his sack. Mandrake stumbled after him. He didn’t want to sit in the car while James fixed up the sack. He wanted to be knowledgeable and active. He tied the sacking over the radiator cap, using his handkerchief to bind it. He looked critically at the way James had tied the corners of the sack. Swinging his heavy boot briskly he came back to the car, smiling through the rain at Chloris. The warmth in her returning glance delighted him and he innocently supposed that it was inspired by his activity. It was the glance, he told himself, of the female, approving, dependent, and even clinging. He would never know that Chloris was deeply touched, not because she saw him as a protector, but because suddenly she read his thoughts. And from that moment, in her wisdom, she let herself be minded by Mandrake.
The car began its crawl down into Deep Bottom.
“For a tidy ten yurr and more,” said James Bewling in the back seat, “my wold brother Thomas and me been telling master as ’ow’ee did oughter put a dinky lil’ bridge across this-yurr bottom. Last winter ’er was in a muck with raging torrents and floods. Winter afore, ’er fruz. Winter afore that, ’er caved in sudden.” Here the car lurched in and out of a pot-hole and James was thrown about in the back seat. “Winter afore that, ’er flooded again. Bean’t no proper entrance to gentlemen’s ’state, us tells ’un. Ay, and us tells bailiff tu. Puff over to your right, sir, by this-yurr puddlesome corner, or us’ll sink to our bottoms.”
The front wheels plunged deep into a welter of slush. The back wheels churned, gripped, skidded and gripped again. Now they were into the snow with James Bewling roaring: “To tha right and rush ’er up.” The bonnet dipped abruptly and a welter of snow spurted over the wind-screen. Mandrake leant out of the driving window and took the whipping rain full in his eyes. “Keep ’er going, sir,” yelled James.
“I’m in a blasted hole or something. Come up.”
The car moved bodily to the left, churned, crept forward in a series of jerks and stopped. “Doan’t stop in-gine fur Lawk’s sake,” James implored and was out and up to his knees. He disappeared in the rear of the car.
“What’s he doing?” asked Mandrake. “He’s on your side.”
Chloris looked out on her side. “I can only see his stern. He seems to be stuffing something under the back wheel. Now, he’s waving. He wants you to go on.”
Mandrake engaged his bottom gear, pulled out his choke a fraction, and tried. The car gripped somewhere, wallowed forward and stuck again. James returned for his shovel and set to work in front of the bonnet. Mandrake got out, leaving instructions with Chloris to keep the engine going. The noise of the storm met him like a physical blow and the drive of rain on his face numbed it. He struggled round to the front of the car and found James shovelling with a will in three feet of snow. Mandrake wore heavy driving-gloves, and set to work with his hands. In the centre the snow was still frozen but at the bottom it had turned to slush and the earth beneath was soft and muddy. The front wheels had jammed in a cross-gut which, as they cleared it, began to fill with water. James roared out something that Mandrake could not understand, thrust his shovel into his hands, and plunged away behind the car. Mandrake toiled on, looking up, once, to see Chloris’ face pressed anxiously against the wind-screen. He grinned, waved his hand and fell to again with a will. James had returned, dragging two great boughs after him. They broke them up as best they could, filled in the gut with smaller branches and thrust the remaining pieces in front of the rear wheels.
The inside of the car seemed a different world, a world that smelt of petrol, upholstery, cigarettes and something that both Mandrake and Chloris secretly realized was peculiar to James Bewling, an aftermath of oilskin, elderly man, and agricultural activities. Mandrake slammed the door, sounded his horn as a warning to James, and speeded up his engine.
“Now then, you old besom,” Mandrake apostrophized his car, “up with you.” With a great crackling of branches, an ominous sinking and a violent lurch, they went forward and up, with James’s voice, raised to an elderly screech, sounding like a banshee in the storm. The chains bit into firmer ground. They were going uphill.
“That’s the first hurdle over, I fancy,” said Mandrake. “We’ll wait for James at the top.”
In the rectory at Winton St. Giles, Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn put his head round the study door and said to his wife: “I’ve been looking out of the top windows at the summit of Cloudyfold. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s raining over there. What do you say, Rector?”
The Reverend Walter Copeland turned his head to look out of the window. The lady behind the large canvas muttered to herself and laid down her brushes.
“Rain?” echoed the Rector. “It’s still freezing down here. Upon my word, though, I believe you’re right. Yes, yes, undoubtedly it’s pouring up round Highfold. Very odd.”
“Very odd indeed,” said Mrs. Alleyn grimly.
“My angel,” said her husband. “I apologize in fourteen different positions. Rector, for pity’s sake resume your pose.”
With a nervous start the Rector turned from the window, clasped his hands, tilted his fine head and stared obediently at the top left-hand corner of the canvas.
“Is that right?”
“Yes, thank you,” said the lady. Her thin face, wearing a streak of green paint across the nose, looked round the side of the canvas at her husband.
“I suppose,” she said with a surprising air of diffidence, “you wouldn’t like to read to us.”
“Yes, I would,” said Alleyn. He came in and shut the door.
“Now, that’s really delightful,” said Mr. Copeland. “I hope I’m not a bad parish priest,” he added, “but it is rather pleasant to know that there can be no more services today — Dinah and I had matins all to ourselves, you know — and that for once the weather is so bad that nobody is likely to come and visit me.”
“If I were on duty,” said Alleyn, looking along the book-shelves, “I should never dare to make those observations.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I did, as sure as fate I’d be called out into the snow, like a melodrama heroine, to a particularly disagreeable case. However,” said Alleyn, taking down a copy of Northanger Abbey, “I’m not on duty, thank the Lord. Shall we have Miss Austen?”
“This yurr be Pen Gidding,” said James Bewling. “Just to right, sir. We’m half-way theer. A nasty stretch she’ll be, round those-thurr hills, and by the looks of her thurr’s bin no rain hereabouts.”
“What’s the time?” asked Chloris. Mandrake held out his wrist. “Have a look.” She pushed up his cuff. “Ten past eleven.”
“With any luck well be ringing the rectory doorbell before noon.”
Chapter XI
Alleyn
“Nicholas,” said Madame Lisse, “come here to me.”
He had been staring through the windows of the green sitting-room at the rain, which still came down like a multitude of rods, piercing all that remained of snow on the drive, filling the house with a melancholy insistence of sound. After she had spoken, though not immediately, he turned from the window and slowly crossed the room.