“Was she riding alone? Was there anyone with her, or near her?”
“Nobody near her. No. She was all alone. She rode not very far from me, past me, going along that way. She was bearing towards the woods, I think. No, I didn’t see anyone at all except her and the horse.”
“Might have been the gipsy who frightened her,” said the rosy-faced woman.
I swung round.
“What gipsy? When?”
“Oh, must have been—well, it must have been three or four hours ago when I went down the road this morning. About quarter to ten maybe, I saw that gipsy woman. The one as lives in the cottages in the village. Least I think it was she. I wasn’t near enough to be sure. But she’s the only one as goes about hereabouts in a red cloak. She was walking up a path through the trees. Somebody told me as she’d said nasty things to the poor American young lady. Threatened her. Told her something bad would happen if she didn’t get out of this place. Very threatening, I hear she was.”
“The gipsy,” I said. Then, bitterly, to myself, though out loud, “Gipsy’s Acre. I wish I’d never seen the place.”
BOOK THREE
Nineteen
I
It’s extraordinary how difficult it is for me to remember what happened after that. I mean, the sequence of it all. Up to then, you see, it’s all clear in my mind. I was a little doubtful where to begin, that was all. But from then on it was as though a knife fell, cutting my life into two halves. What I went on to from the moment of Ellie’s death seems to me now like something for which I was not prepared. A confusion of thrusting people and elements and happenings where I wasn’t myself in control of anything any more. Things happened not to me, but all around me. That’s what it seemed like.
Everybody was very kind to me. That seems the thing I remember best. I stumbled about and looked dazed and didn’t know what to do. Greta, I remember, came into her element. She had that amazing power that women have to take charge of a situation and deal with it. Deal, I mean, with all the small unimportant details that someone has to see to. I would have been incapable of seeing to them.
I think the first thing I remembered clearly after they’d taken Ellie away and I’d got back to my house—our house—the house—was when Dr. Shaw came along and talked to me. I don’t know how long after that was. He was quiet, kind, reasonable. Just explaining things clearly and gently.
Arrangements. I remember his using the word arrangements. What a hateful word it is and all the things it stands for. The things in life that have grand words—Love—sex—life—death—hate—those aren’t the things that govern existence at all. It’s lots of other pettifogging, degrading things. Things you have to endure, things you never think about until they happen to you. Undertakers, arrangements for funerals, inquests. And servants coming into rooms and pulling the blinds down. Why should blinds be pulled down because Ellie was dead? Of all the stupid things!
That was why, I remember, I felt quite grateful to Dr. Shaw. He dealt with such things so kindly and sensibly, explaining gently why certain things like an inquest had to be. Talking rather slowly, I remember, so that he could be quite sure I was taking them in.
II
I didn’t know what an inquest would be like. I’d never been to one. It seemed to me curiously unreal, amateurish. The Coroner was a small fussy little man with pincenez. I had to give evidence of identification, to describe the last time I had seen Ellie at the breakfast table and her departure for her usual morning ride and the arrangement we had made to meet later for lunch. She had seemed, I said, exactly the same as usual, in perfectly good health.
Dr. Shaw’s evidence was quiet, inconclusive. No serious injuries, a wrenched collar bone and bruises such as would result from a fall from the horse—not of a very serious nature, and inflicted at the time of death. She did not appear to have moved again after she had fallen. Death, he thought, had been practically instantaneous. There was no specific organic injury to have caused death, and he could give no other explanation of it than that she had died from heart failure caused by shock. As far as I could make out from the medical language used Ellie had died simply as a result of absence of breath—of asphyxia of some kind. Her organs were healthy, her stomach contents normal.
Greta, who also gave evidence, stressed rather more forcibly than she had done to Dr. Shaw before, that Ellie had suffered from some form of heart malady three or four years ago. She had never heard anything definite mentioned but Ellie’s relations had occasionally said that her heart was weak and that she must take care not to overdo things. She had never heard anything more definite than that.
Then we came to the people who had seen or been in the vicinity at the time the accident happened. The old man who had been cutting peat was the first of them. He had seen the lady pass him, she’d been about fifty yards or so away. He knew who she was though he’d never spoken to her. She was the lady from the new house.
“You knew her by sight?”
“No, not exactly by sight but I knew the horse, sir. It’s got a white fetlock. Used to belong to Mr. Carey over at Shettlegroom. I’ve never heard it anything but quiet and well behaved, suitable for a lady to ride.”
“Was the horse giving any trouble when you saw it? Playing up in any way?”
“No, it was quiet enough. It was a nice morning.”
There hadn’t been many people about, he said. He hadn’t noticed many. That particular track across the moor wasn’t much used except as a short cut occasionally to one of the farms. Another track crossed it about a mile farther away. He’d seen one or two passers-by that morning but not to notice. One man on a bicycle, another man walking. They were too far away for him to see who they were and he hadn’t noticed much anyway. Earlier, he said, before he’d seen the lady riding, he’d seen old Mrs. Lee, or so he thought. She was coming up the track towards him and then she turned off and went into the woods. She often walked across the moors and in and out of the woods.
The Coroner asked why Mrs. Lee was not in court. He understood that she’d been summoned to attend. He was told, however, that Mrs. Lee had left the village some days ago—nobody knew exactly when. She had not left any address behind. It was not her habit to do so, she often went away and came back without notifying anyone. So there was nothing unusual about this. In fact one or two people said they thought she’d already left the village before the day the accident happened. The Coroner asked the old man again.
“You think, however, that it was Mrs. Lee you saw?”
“Couldn’t say, I’m sure. Wouldn’t like to be certain. It was a tall woman and striding along, and had on a scarlet cloak, like Mrs. Lee wears sometimes. But I didn’t look particular. I was busy with what I was doing. Could have been she, it could have been someone else. Who’s to say?”
As for the rest he repeated very much what he had said to us. He’d seen the lady riding nearby, he’d often seen her riding before. He hadn’t paid any particular attention. Only later did he see the horse galloping alone. It looked as though something had frightened it, he said. “At least, it could be that way.” He couldn’t tell what time that was. Might have been eleven, might have been earlier. He saw the horse much later, farther away. It seemed to be returning towards the woods.
Then the Coroner recalled me and asked me a few more questions about Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Esther Lee of Vine Cottage.
“You and your wife knew Mrs. Lee by sight?”
“Yes,” I said, “quite well.”
“Did you talk with her?”
“Yes, several times. Or rather,” I added, “she talked to us.”
“Did she at any time threaten you or your wife?”
I paused a moment or two.
“In a sense she did,” I said slowly, “but I never thought—”
“You never thought what?”
“I never thought she really meant it,” I said.
“Did she sound as though she had any particular grudge against your wife?”
??
?My wife said so once. She said she thought she had some special grudge against her but she couldn’t see why.”
“Had you or your wife at any time ordered her off your land, threatened her, treated her roughly in any way?”
“Any aggression came from her side,” I said.
“Did you ever have the impression that she was mentally unbalanced?”
I considered. “Yes,” I said, “I did. I thought she had come to believe that the land on which we had built our house belonged to her, or belonged to her tribe or whatever they call themselves. She had a kind of obsession about it.” I added slowly, “I think she was getting worse, more and more obsessed by the idea.”
“I see. She never offered your wife physical violence at any time?”
“No,” I said, slowly, “I don’t think it would be fair to say that. It was all—well all a sort of gipsy’s warning stuff. ‘You’ll have bad luck if you stay here. There’ll be a curse on you unless you go away.’”
“Did she mention the word death?”
“Yes, I think so. We didn’t take her seriously. At least,” I corrected myself, “I didn’t.”
“Do you think your wife did?”
“I’m afraid she did sometimes. The old woman, you know, could be rather alarming. I don’t think she was really responsible for what she was saying or doing.”
The proceedings ended with the Coroner adjourning the inquest for a fortnight. Everything pointed to death being due to accidental causes but there was not sufficient evidence to show what had caused the accident to occur. He would adjourn the proceedings until he had heard the evidence of Mrs. Esther Lee.
Twenty
The day after the inquest I went to see Major Phillpot and I told him point-blank that I wanted his opinion. Someone whom the old peat-cutting man had taken to be Mrs. Esther Lee had been seen going up towards the woods that morning.
“You know the old woman,” I said. “Do you actually think that she would have been capable of causing an accident by deliberate malice?”
“I can’t really believe so, Mike,” he said. “To do a thing like that you need a very strong motive. Revenge for some personal injury caused to you. Something like that. And what had Ellie ever done to her? Nothing.”
“It seems crazy, I know. Why was she constantly appearing in that queer way, threatening Ellie, telling her to go away? She seemed to have a grudge against her, but how could she have had a grudge? She’d never met Ellie or seen her before. What was Ellie to her but a perfectly strange American? There’s no past history, no link between them.”
“I know, I know,” said Phillpot. “I can’t help feeling, Mike, that there’s something here that we don’t undertand. I don’t know how much your wife was over in England previous to her marriage. Did she ever live in this part of the world for any length of time?”
“No, I’m sure of that. It’s all so difficult. I don’t really know anything about Ellie. I mean, who she knew, where she went. We just—met.” I checked myself and looked at him. I said, “You don’t know how we came to meet, do you? No,” I went on, “you wouldn’t guess in a hundred years how we met.” And suddenly, in spite of myself, I began to laugh. Then I pulled myself together. I could feel that I was very near hysteria.
I could see his kind patient face just waiting till I was myself again. He was a helpful man. There was no doubt about that.
“We met here,” I said. “Here at Gipsy’s Acre. I had been reading the notice board of the sale of The Towers and I walked up the road, up the hill because I was curious about this place. And that’s how I first saw her. She was standing there under a tree. I startled her—or perhaps it was she who startled me. Anyway, that’s how it all began. That’s how we came to live here in this damned, cursed, unlucky place.”
“Have you felt that all along? That it would be unlucky?”
“No. Yes. No, I don’t know really. I’ve never admitted it. I’ve never wanted to admit it. But I think she knew. I think she’s been frightened all along.” Then I said slowly, “I think somebody deliberately wanted to frighten her.”
He said rather sharply, “What do you mean by that? Who wanted to frighten her?”
“Presumably the gipsy woman. But somehow I’m not quite sure about it…She used to lie in wait for Ellie, you know, tell her this place would bring her bad luck. Tell her she ought to go away from it.”
“Tcha!” He spoke angrily. “I wish I’d been told more about that. I’d have spoken to old Esther. Told her she couldn’t do things like that.”
“Why did she?” I asked. “What made her?”
“Like so many people,” said Phillpot, “she likes to make herself important. She likes either to give people warnings or else tell their fortunes and prophesy happy lives for them. She likes to pretend she knows the future.”
“Supposing,” I said slowly, “somebody gave her money. I’ve been told she’s fond of money.”
“Yes, she was very fond of money. If someone paid her—that’s what you’re suggesting—what put that idea into your head?”
“Sergeant Keene,” I said. “I should never have thought of it myself.”
“I see.” He shook his head doubtfully.
“I can’t believe,” he said, “that she would deliberately try to frighten your wife to the extent of causing an accident.”
“She mayn’t have counted on a fatal accident. She might have done something to frighten the horse,” I said. “Let off a squib or flapped a sheet of white paper or something. Sometimes, you know, I did feel that she had some entirely personal grudge against Ellie, a grudge for some reason that I don’t know about.”
“That sounds very far-fetched.”
“This place never belonged to her?” I asked. “The land, I mean.”
“No. Gipsies may have been warned off this property, probably more than once. Gipsies are always getting turned off places, but I doubt if they keep up a life-long resentment about it.”
“No,” I said, “that would be far-fetched. But I do wonder if for some reason that we don’t know about—she was paid—”
“A reason we don’t know about—what reason?”
I reflected a moment or two.
“Everything I say will just sound fantastic. Let’s say that, as Keene suggested, someone paid her to do the things she did. What did that someone want? Say they wanted to make us both go away from here. They concentrated on Ellie, not on me, because I wouldn’t be scared in the way Ellie would be. They frightened her to get her—and through her both of us—to leave here. If so, there must be some reason for wanting the land to come on the market again. Somebody, shall we say, for some reason wants our land.” I stopped.
“It’s a logical suggestion,” Phillpot said, “but I know of no reason why anyone should.”
“Some important mineral deposit,” I suggested, “that nobody knows about.”
“Hm, I doubt it.”
“Something like buried treasure. Oh, I know it sounds absurd. Or—well, say the proceeds of some big bank robbery.”
Phillpot was still shaking his head but rather less vehemently now.
“The only other proposition,” I said, “is to go one step farther back as you did just now. Behind Mrs. Lee to the person who paid Mrs. Lee. That might be some unknown enemy of Ellie’s.”
“But you can’t think of anyone it would be likely to be?”
“No. She didn’t know anyone down here. That I’m sure of. She had no links with this place.” I got up. “Thank you for listening to me,” I said.
“I wish I could have been more helpful.”
I went out of the door, fingering the thing that I was carrying in my pocket. Then, taking a sudden decision, I turned on my heels and went back into the room.
“There’s something I’d like to show you,” I said. “Actually, I was going to take it down to show Sergeant Keene and see what he could make of it.”
I dived into my pocket and brought out a stone round which was wrappe
d a crumpled bit of paper with printed writing on it.
“This was thrown through our breakfast window this morning,” I said. “I heard the crash of the glass as I came down the stairs. A stone was thrown through the window once before when we first came here. I don’t know if this is the same person or not.”
I took off the wrapping paper and held it out for him. It was a dirty, coarse bit of paper. There was some printing on it in rather faint ink. Phillpot put on his spectacles and bent over the piece of paper. The message on it was quite short. All it said was, “It was a woman who killed your wife.”
Phillpot’s eyebrows went up.
“Extraordinary,” he said. “Was the first message you got printed?”
“I can’t remember now. It was just a warning to go away from here. I can’t even remember the exact wording of it now. Anyway, it seems pretty certain that that was hooligans. This doesn’t seem quite the same.”
“Do you think it was thrown in by someone who knew something?”
“Probably just a bit of silly cruel malice in the anonymous letter class. You get it, you know, a good deal in villages.”
He handed it back to me.
“But I think your instinct was right,” he said, “to take it to Sergeant Keene. He’ll know more about these anonymous things than I should.”
I found Sergeant Keene at the police station and he was definitely interested.
“There’s queer things going on here,” he said.
“What do you think it means?” I asked.
“Hard to say. Might be just malice leading up to accusing some particular person.”
“It might be just accusing Mrs. Lee, I suppose?”
“No, I don’t think it would have been put that way. It might be—I’d like to think it was—it might be that someone saw or heard something. Heard a noise or a cry or the horse bolted right past someone, and they saw or met a woman soon afterwards. But it sounds as though it was a different woman from the gipsy, because everyone thinks the gipsy’s mixed up in this anyway. So this sounds as though another, an entirely different woman was meant.”