“Don’t be absurd, Frank, there is nothing to apologize for. Only it struck me, especially since this stag-hunting business began, that perhaps there was a ghost that wanted laying and you might be happier if you went ghost-hunting by yourself.”
Francis Pettigrew was staring across the valley again in the direction from which the stag had appeared.
“A ghost!” he reflected. “Do you know, Eleanor, you are a great deal nearer the truth than even you have any business to be. There is a ghost, and I’ve only just remembered what it is.”
He picked up the picnic basket and, walking over to the car, got into the passenger seat. Eleanor took her place at the wheel.
“So you’ve decided not to walk?” she said.
“I intend to walk,” he replied, “but not from here. We’ll drive round the head of the combe, and you can put me down near Bolter’s Tussock.”
“But that’s taking you away from Sallowcombe.”
“Not as much as you’d think. There’s quite a good cross-country track past Tucker’s Barrows that cuts off a mile of road. I shall manage it very well.”
Eleanor started the car and they set off. Presently she asked: “Is there any particular virtue in Bolter’s Tussock that makes you want to start your walk there?”
“I don’t know that you’d call it a virtue, exactly, but it has one excellent qualification for ghost-laying.”
“What is that?”
“Obviously, that it should be haunted.”
They drove some distance in silence before Pettigrew spoke again.
“As you have not asked what I mean, I assume that you intend to rely on your usual uncanny methods to find out. I propose in this case to thwart you by the simple expedient of telling you outright. The plain fact is that I was more horribly frightened at Bolter’s Tussock than I have ever been in my life.”
“What by? Did your pony run away with you?”
“Actually, the pony did bolt-and anyone who thinks that isn’t a frightening experience has no imagination. But that was afterwards. The real horror came first.”
“Don’t tell me about it if you’d rather not.”
“Good Lord, I’ve no objection to talking about it now! The interesting thing is that this is literally the first time I have ever mentioned it to anybody. I was much too scared at the time to say anything, and after that I must have bottled it up inside me so successfully that I ended by forgetting it altogether-until about ten minutes ago. Memory’s a funny thing, isn’t it? Perhaps that suppressed memory was at the back of the hideous nightmares that used to plague me at school.”
“Perhaps,” said Eleanor a trifle acidly. “But I shouldn’t like to give an opinion till you’d told me what ‘it’ was.”
“ ‘It’ was simply a dead man.”
“On Bolter’s Tussock?”
“Yes.”
“What was it doing there?”
“I have no idea-I never found out.”
“And you-you just left it there?”
“I left very quickly, when the pony bolted.”
“But somebody else must have found it, even if you said nothing. Didn’t you read about it in the papers or hear people talking about it?”
“One doesn’t read the papers much at that age, except the cricket scores, and I didn’t listen to what my elders said about things like that.”
“You seem to have been remarkably incurious.”
“Incurious! Good God, woman, can’t you understand? I was terrified. I didn’t want to know any more about it. I was convinced that if anything came out, I should be made in some way responsible. For days afterwards I couldn’t see a policeman without being certain that he was going to ask me about the body on Bolter’s Tussock. Every time my father opened a newspaper I was sure he would read out an account of it, and turn on me with some deadly question which would end in my being hauled off to prison. And then time went by-it can’t have been more than a week or so, really, but it seemed longer-and the holidays were over, and I was safe back at prep school and nothing had happened.”
He stopped abruptly and looked out of the window.
“All right, you can put me down here,” he said.
He got out of the car. In the bright autumn sun, Bolter’s Tussock, above and to the left of where he stood, looked as innocent and peaceful as any strip of moorland could well do. From far down the valley a distant cry of hounds told him that the hunt was still afoot.
“Have a good walk,” said Eleanor. “And don’t be too disappointed if-”
“If what?”
“If there’s nothing there after all.”
CHAPTER III. Minster Tracy
Having left her husband to walk home, Eleanor took the opportunity to carry out a plan which had long been in her mind. She would call on Hester Greenway.
Hester Greenway had been Eleanor’s best friend at school. She had not seen her for a long time, but they had kept in touch over the years. They remembered each other’s birthdays, and every Christmas brought from Hester not only a small hand-made gift in impeccable taste but a long, chatty letter. Frank had never met her, and it is regrettably to be recorded that he had taken a strong dislike to her, solely on the strength of her taste in Christmas presents and her epistolary style. For this reason, Eleanor had seen fit to say nothing to him of the arrangement by which she was now driving, not back to Sallowcombe, but to Minster Tracy.
Following the directions she had been given, Eleanor turned off the main road down a lane that led her into a deep valley. As she rounded a bend, she saw below her Tracy Church, embowered in trees, the inevitable stream purling past its west door. Hester’s father had been vicar of the parish, which after his death had been amalgamated with another, because its small and dwindling population could not support an incumbent of its own. Eleanor knew all this, and that Minster Tracy was reputed to be the second smallest church in England; but she had not expected anything quite so tiny or so lonely. The minute church was surrounded by a well-filled churchyard, but she could see no living habitation. Only when she had almost reached it did she notice a pair of stone pillars marking the entrance to a drive that led to a house of some substance set well back from the road. A little further on, the furious barking of a Sealyham terrier announced her arrival at Hester’s little house.
Eleanor had not been prepared for the Sealyham. Hester had not betrayed any interest in dogs during their schooldays, or in that never-to-be-forgotten fortnight in Florence which had been the highlight of their friendship. Herself not a dog-lover, she was perhaps unreasonably surprised to find that Hester had become one. She found that it was not the only respect in which her friend had changed. It was natural enough that she should have become countrified, and in the process have somewhat aged, but need her form be quite so tweedy, her face so weatherbeaten?
Oddly enough, Miss Greenway, though hospitable enough in her welcome, seemed to find cause for comment in the changes which the years had wrought in Eleanor.
“Good old Ellie!” she cried as she came to the door. “My word, but anyone can see with half an eye that you’re married! Let’s see, how long is it now? Ten years? Twelve? Who would have thought it? Down, Jeannie, down!” she went on to the Sealyham. “Go to your basket! Isn’t she a ripping little bitch? Three litters I’ve had from her, and do the pups sell! You’ve never embarked on a family, have you, Ellie? I dare say you’re right, but it seems rather a shame to have got the matronly figure with nothing to show for it.”
Eleanor, who had not been called Ellie since she was in Upper Fifth, said in non-committal tones that she was very well and that Hester also looked well.