“Though he makes an exception to that on Saturday nights at the pub?”
“You have it, sir.”
“The present master, Sir James, appears to tolerate his presence in his woods?”
Styles’s face froze for a moment, his lips pursed. “He does,” was all he ventured in reply. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, got up from the table and began to open the window, murmuring about fresh air and the remiss parlour maid who had failed to air the room.
As the window went up Joe was startled to hear a shot ring out in the distance. Styles anticipated his question with a soothing and dismissive smile. “Bang on time! Not poachers! The rook-scarer, sir. It’s one of the master’s latest innovations. It’s automatic. Fires itself off in the orchards every half hour from before dawn for two hours. Saves sending the children out at an unearthly hour to keep the birds off the soft fruit with rattles. You have just heard the final flourish for today. A disconcerting noise if you’re not used to it but, after a while, it’s like the church bells—you don’t hear it any more.”
Joe was further startled by the sound of feet scurrying down the corridor and young Timmy’s face appeared round the door.
“Sir … Mr. Styles … Begging your pardons … There’s a lady on the telephone ringing from London. She wants to speak to the policeman. Says it’s urgent.”
Joe swiftly put down his coffee cup.
“LILY! STILL ON watch?”
He listened to Lily’s account, making no comment on the prospective arrival of Sir James with a mixed bag of three guests, not wishing to spoil her moment. Her identification of the three was, however, news to him—and might be a surprise to Cecily also, he suspected. “Thank you, Lily!” He spoke with warmth. “You’ve just passed me a winning hand! For the first time in this wretched affair, I don’t feel I’m on the back foot. It may not make much sense to you down there in London but it certainly shines a light on things here. Things are coming to the boil. But knowing who’re on their way, I can begin to guess where the heat’s coming from. Even better—they have no idea they’ll see my grinning face on the front steps.”
He looked at his watch. He reckoned he had time enough to prepare for the arrival. And plenty of time to put the frighteners on the Wild Man of the Woods.
JOE APPROACHED THE ancient woodland with care, eyes scanning the bushes, ears alert for human sounds amongst the trees. The explosion he’d heard had not come from any rook-scarer. He’d not heard of a machine that boasted a dull echo a few seconds after discharge. It had been a sound he could not mistake—someone had fired off a shotgun moments before the rook-scarer had delivered its seven o’clock warning. As the blast had come from the direction of the Temple of Diana, Joe told himself that the Wild Man must have wakened and decided to pot a rabbit for his Sunday lunch. He was determined the second barrel was not going to be emptied into him.
The rubber-soled tennis shoes he’d chosen to put on made his approach soundless. He hoped no one was watching him but he rather thought someone was there, standing silently in the woodland, interpreting the unnatural care with which he eased himself through the trees as a state of fear or, at best, comical eccentricity. There was fear in his furtive movements, certainly. Fear had kept him alive; he did not disdain the natural emotion. He used it as a sixth sense but a sense moderated by reason and controlled by training.
Fear was warning him now that all was not as it should be in these woods. He stopped and with his back to a tree trunk, took stock of his surroundings. An early morning walk in June should have been a joyous experience, all senses charmed by a fresh green welcoming Nature. He analysed what was missing. No birds were calling out a warning to each other, signalling ahead the presence of a stranger. The normally vociferous ring doves had nothing to say. No animals were moving thorough the underbrush. Even the breeze had surrendered and the treetops were motionless. A lugubrious cloud of silence hung over the wood. The shot he’d heard twenty minutes ago? Were even the woodland creatures holding their breath waiting for the second barrel?
The gleam of a white marble limb through the trees as he turned his head gave Joe his bearings. Diana was pointing his way. Peering through the gloom beyond the statue he located the outline of the wooden cabin where Goodfellow had established himself as the King of the Grove. A very unappealing place to pass your time, surely? Sir Edwin Lutyens might have expressed polite approval but Joe was not an admirer. The man must be more than a little mad to be content to lead an existence out here in this spooky spot. Possibly fearful too. Joe would not have wanted to spend a single night camping out here, alone.
Fear went with the job, Joe reckoned. He wondered if Virbio himself knew the story. The Guardian of Diana’s Grove was destined to reign in a state of constant terror. Not only of the goddess’s vengeful temper but also in apprehension of his own violent death at the hands of his successor. By tradition, he could be challenged by some younger, more aggressive aspirant waiting for his moment. Symbolically, the challenger would tear down a branch from an oak tree and then would begin the fight to the death. At the memory of the oak branch he’d reached up and tentatively tugged at, Joe shuddered and recalled Virbio’s strange question to him: “Are you here to kill me?”
Virbio had taken him for a challenger. A stalker intent on deposing him.
Poor chap! What a hideous delusion under which to live one’s life! Why in hell did he stay on? How could any man allow an ancient, irrelevant and decidedly unpleasant myth to take over his life? What reality was he fleeing from? Could it possibly be worse than the fantasy? Joe decided that if he was intending to take the inebriated Man of the Woods by surprise it might be a kindness to come at him in a tactful manner. He didn’t want to bring on a heart attack. Or provoke a fight to the death.
THE DOOR TO the cottage was standing slightly open. Careful to stay out of aim of anyone in the interior, Joe crept close and put his ear to the jamb. He listened for a drunken snoring. No sound. Joe pushed the door open a further inch or two and almost fell backwards in surprise as a sound shattered the silence. An unnatural, inhuman sound. The squeal of a blocked organ pipe? The smothered screech of a strangled cat? Joe discarded both of his original impressions. This was some pitiful animal caught in a trap, he decided, calculating that the brief sound was magnified by the small dimensions of the wooden hut.
He breathed deeply and moved inside, steeling himself to deal with whatever creature was in distress.
A nightmare scene assaulted his wide-eyed stare into the gloom.
In the curtained interior, sprawled on the bed in what seemed to be the single room of the cottage, lay a corpse.
The body of Virbio, Joe assumed. Lying across his coverlet. With his woolly grey hair and gnarled limbs, bunioned white feet sticking out of his winceyette pyjama legs, cup of tea half drunk on his bedside table, he could have been anyone’s grandfather sleeping in on a Sunday morning. Had it not been for the copious streams of blood that covered torso and arms and the red splatter staining the white-painted wall behind the bedhead. A double-barrelled game rifle lay beside the bed, having, to all appearances, dropped from his dead hand. Nauseated by the battlefield stench of fresh blood, stale alcohol, and cordite, Joe moved closer and peered down at the remains of the face.
Fired from below, the blast had caught him on one side of the neck and made its way upwards, smashing the jaw and deflecting sideways. The eyes were intact and open. Disconcertingly, they seemed to be staring back at him. In alarm, Joe moved sideways out of their range. The eyes followed his. Locked on. From the open mouth there came the same inhuman shriek Joe had heard from the doorway. Joe steadied himself with an effort. With his speaking mechanisms smashed to pieces, all the dying man could do was make a noise through one pipe or other that remained intact. Joe reckoned that he must have survived twenty minutes in this hopeless state of paralysis and that death would come very soon. He’d cradled dying men in his arms in the trenches, in disbelief at the amount of a man’s body that could be shot away and yet leave him for a few moments able to communicate.