At this moment the Sunday school superintendent came out and rang a handbell and ordered us all inside the building, but Our Sarah said to her group,
'Oi en agoen en there. Let's go down the sheepwash and see what's doen.'
'Can't, in our Sunday clothes,' said Kenneth. 'Besides, our cousins would know and they'd split on us. I think we'd better go in.'
'I shan't,' I said, as I noticed our cousins and several others sneaking away towards the gate. 'I'm never going in there again after what that man said to me last time. I vote we walk up to the big house and try to get a word with Lionel. He won't have heard about the murder and I want to be the first to tell him, and to tell him about Mr Ward because he's a relation.'
'You don't really think Mr Ward is a murderer, do you?'
'He might even be the person who got murdered. Anyway, coming with me?'
'All right. We'd better go by way of The Marsh and up Lovers' Lane, so as not to go past Aunt Kirstie's.'
'We can't go up Lovers' Lane if the police have roped off the sheepwash. They might arrest us.'
'Not they. They can only send us away.'
'We're not supposed to use Lovers' Lane, anyway, and we've done one bad thing already, not going into Sunday school.'
'You can take a horse to Sunday school but you can't make it sing hymns,' said Kenneth.
We giggled at this witticism and passed out at the Sunday school gate. As we reached Mother Honour's shop Kenneth looked across the road at the tumbledown cottage and said, 'I suppose Mr Ward couldn't be hiding in there? Let's go and look.'
'Oh, come on,' I said. 'We can't go into that filthy place in our Sunday clothes.' So we crossed over at Mother Honour's, avoided the cottage and went on to The Marsh by way of the bridge and the culvert. It was, I suppose, less than half a mile to the sheepwash and long before we got there we could see several people standing about, but none of them looked like policemen.
'Might be detectives in plain clothes,' said Kenneth.
'One of them's Uncle Arthur,' I said, for I could see the two dogs. 'We'd better go back. We don't want questions asked about Sunday school.'
But the dogs had spotted us. Floss was on a lead; Vicky, who could be trusted, was not. She came leaping and bounding up to us and Uncle Arthur turned round to order her back and saw us.
'It's a fair cop,' muttered Kenneth, as he stooped to fondle Vicky. 'What shall we say?'
As it happened, there was no need to say anything, for Uncle Arthur either had forgotten or did not realise that we ought to have been in Sunday school. Later we remembered that he had not been present when we received our marching orders.
'You two get off home,' he said. 'No place for children, this isn't.'
'Why isn't it?' I asked, playing the innocent. I noticed, incidentally, that the ropes and stakes which Our Sarah had mentioned were no longer in position and that the bystanders were neither policemen nor detectives, but Sunday morning idlers come to gawp at the spot marked with a cross.
'Something happened last night to a poor young girl,' said Uncle Arthur, 'so you mind what your dad and mam tells you, and don't you ever go speaking to no strangers.'
'We never do,' I said, forgetting for the moment that once Kenneth had spoken to Old Sukie. We fell in beside Uncle Arthur and when we reached grandfather's little wooden bridge over the brook, our uncle indicated it and told us to cut off home. This did not fit in with our plans at all, but we crossed the planks, opened the iron gate and walked a little way up the path between the currant bushes. When we snaked back to the gate and cautiously opened it, Uncle Arthur was almost up to the culvert. We watched him cross the little bridge and disappear round the corner. He had taken the road which led away from the village and, indeed, had he planned to return home, he would have accompanied us.
'He's killing time until the pub opens at twelve,' said Kenneth, 'then he'll go in and ask the men if they've seen Mr Ward. I reckon we've got at least a couple of hours.'
'We haven't, you know,' I said. 'Sunday school comes out at eleven to be ready for church. We'll be expected home.'
'We can say we went for a walk.'
'What! When Uncle Arthur thinks we went straight home when he left us?'
'Oh, well, perhaps we'd better just hang about until Sunday school comes out, then, and look in on Aunt Kirstie just to get ourselves identified and then we can go off again. She'll be too busy with the Sunday roast to bother about what we're up to, and dinner isn't on the table until half-past one, so how about that?'
'How will we know when Sunday school is over?'
'We'll have to get back there and join the others as they come out.'
'Suppose we're spotted getting there?'
'We won't be. All we've got to do is nip past Polly's stable, get through the fence, nip through the hermit's cottage and sneak past Mrs Honour's.'
'That's if there's nobody in the cottage. Suppose Mr Ward is in there again! And it's such a mess!'
'Have to chance it. Come on,' said Kenneth, 'and look out for that frock of yours. We don't want questions asked about damage to Sunday clothes.'
'Just the reason I said before. I don't want to go to that cottage,' I said. 'It's so filthy.'
'Suit yourself. I'll go alone, then, and come back here and give you the tip when Sunday school is out.'
But this was too much for my elder-sisterly pride.
'Oh, come on, then,' I said crossly and, without another word, we made our way past the stable and squeezed through between the widened bars in the hermit's backyard fence.
We stood a moment, listening, but there was not a sound in the weedy, overgrown garden, not a bird-note, not even a scurrying rat. The silence, indeed, was uncanny and I think we both felt we ought not to break it. It was an enchantment, but an uncomfortable one. I remember thinking of a ghost-story I had read where the most sinister ghosts were not confined to the hours of darkness, but stalked the earth, tall and terrible as the Host of the Sidh, at noonday at the full zenith of the sun.
There was no wind, either, not so much as the sigh of a zephyr, and my thoughts took another although not a more comforting turn.
'It's like Walter de la Mare,' I said softly, for my class had had an enlightened young teacher the previous term, a student from a London college, who took us once a week for poetry.
'It's like where someone has died,' said Kenneth. 'Let's leave. The place gives me the creeps.'
There was only one major change inside the stinking, grisly little cottage. Somebody had filled in Mr Ward's grave-like hole and stamped the earth flat over it. His pickaxe was leaning up against a filthy wall, but his spade had gone. We heard later that the police had found it at the bottom of the deepest part of the sheepwash.
* * *
No questions were asked regarding Sunday school, but this did not surprise us much. Very little notice was ever taken of our doings so long as we did not get openly into mischief and very little interest was displayed in those things which interested us. This was not owing to negligence, but simply to the fact that, so long as we ate heartily, were what the aunts termed 'biddable' and did not appear to be sickening for anything, our welfare, both physical and spiritual, was taken for granted-a state of affairs which suited everybody, ourselves included.
Sunday dinner-it was roast loin of pork and I was given a chop with a bit of delicious kidney in it-was over at a quarter to three and, as usual, we were sent next door to Aunt Lally to do our Sunday reading of improving literature. As, like Aunt Kirstie and Uncle Arthur, Aunt Lally retired to her bed until Sunday tea-time, we never found much difficulty in slipping out of the house without waking grandfather, whose custom it was to put a large handkerchief over his face and sleep in his armchair until Aunt Lally woke him to give him his tea. When she reappeared she always found us piously perusing the books and pamphlets she had left with us and I will say for her that she never catechised us upon what we were supposed to have read. From her point of view, it was easier not to do so than to involve us in lies or to hear our unpalatable truths. I cannot really believe she thought we had spent the best part of two hours in reading 'How Paul's penny became a pound' or 'Little Meg's Children', let alone the tracts and other moralistic works of which she had such a collection, but she was a simple soul, so perhaps she did think we were as good as I am sure we appeared to be.