‘Better take a look amongst the trees,’ Peter said in a low voice.
‘Don’t you go, sir, you don’t know what might happen to you!’
‘Well, I’m not asking you to come,’ Peter said. ‘Do pull yourself together!’
Together he and Charles stepped out on to the gravel-path, and began to cross the lawn towards the belt of trees.
‘Bit of imagination, if you ask me,’ Peter growled. ‘Good job he didn’t see that skeleton.’ Then he grabbed at Charles’ arm, and gripped it hard. Some shadow had moved among the still shadows of the trees. ‘There is something there!’ Peter breathed. ‘Go carefully!’
They stole forward in the lee of the overgrown hedge, and as they drew nearer to the trees a figure seemed to slide out of the darkness before them. They saw a form standing motionless on the edge of the lawn. Its face was in shadow, but it looked their way, and seemed to be awaiting them. Involuntarily they checked, for there was something strangely eerie about the waiting form, nor could they distinguish more than the outline of the figure, which seemed to be draped in some long garment that looked rather like a cassock. Then the figure moved and the spell was broken.
‘I fear I am committing an act of trespass,’ a mild voice announced. ‘I am in pursuit of a specimen rare indeed in this country. Permit me to make myself known to you; I fear you thought me a thief in the night.’ As it spoke the figure removed a slouch hat, and revealed a countenance adorned with steel-rimmed spectacles, and surmounted by sparse grey hair. ‘I am an entomologist: my name is Ernest Titmarsh,’ it said.
Three
FOR A MOMENT THEY STARED AT ONE ANOTHER; THEN Peter began to laugh. Mr Ernest Titmarsh, far from being offended, beamed affably upon him. Peter pulled himself together as soon as he could, and said with a quiver in his voice: ‘I beg your pardon, but really it’s rather funny. You see, whenever we catch sight of anyone wandering about in our grounds we think he’s a ghost.’
Mr Titmarsh blinked at him. ‘Dear me, is that so indeed? A ghost, did you say?’
‘Yes,’ Charles said gravely. ‘It’s – it’s an idiosyncrasy of ours.’
Mr Titmarsh replaced his hat upon his head, and seemed to give the matter some thought. Light broke upon him. ‘Of course, of course!’ he said. ‘This is the Priory!’
‘Didn’t you know?’ asked Peter, somewhat surprised.
‘Now I come to look about me, yes,’ replied their eccentric visitor. ‘But I fear I am very absent-minded. Yes, yes, indeed, I owe you an apology. You are not, I suppose, interested in entomology?’
‘I’m afraid I know very little about it,’ confessed Peter.
‘An absorbing study,’ Mr Titmarsh said with enthusiasm. ‘But it leads one into committing acts of trespass, as you perceive. Yes, I am much to blame. I will at once depart.’
‘Oh, don’t do that!’ Charles interposed. ‘We haven’t the smallest objection to you – er – catching moths in our grounds. Now we know who you are we shan’t take you for a ghost again.’
‘Really,’ said Mr Titmarsh, ‘this is most kind. I repeat, most kind. Am I to understand that I have your permission to pursue my studies in your grounds? Tut-tut, this puts me under quite an obligation. Two evenings since, I observed what I believe to be an oleander hawk-moth. Yes, my dear sir, actually that rarest of specimens. I have great hopes of adding it to my collection. That will be indeed a triumph.’
‘Well, in that case, we won’t interrupt you any longer,’ Charles said. ‘We’ll just wish you luck, and retire.’
Mr Titmarsh bowed with old-world courtesy, and as though his hobby suddenly called him, turned, and darted back amongst the trees.
‘And there we are,’ said Charles. ‘Might as well live in a public park, as far as I can see. I wish I’d remembered to ask him if he was interested in skeletons.’
‘I admit it looked a bit fishy, finding him snooping about just at this moment,’ said Peter, ‘but somehow I don’t see him in the rôle of house-breaker. We’d better go in and reassure the girls.’
In the garden-hall they found Bowers, who had watched their proceedings with a gradual return to calm. He looked slightly sheepish when he learned who was the visitor, but he advanced the opinion that they had not heard the last of the Monk yet. This they were inclined to believe, but when they rejoined the girls they assumed the manner of those who had successfully laid a ghost.
Celia was not convinced, however. The discovery of the skeleton, she said, accounted for every strange noise they had heard, since its unquiet spirit was obviously haunting the scene of its ghastly end.
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Mrs Bosanquet firmly, ‘but I do know that it is most unhygienic to have dead bodies walled up in the house, and unless it is at once removed, and the place thoroughly fumigated, I shall return to town to-morrow.’
‘Oh!’ said Celia, shuddering, ‘you don’t suppose I’m going to stay here any longer do you, Aunt? We shall all go home to-morrow. I only wish we’d sold the place when we had the offer.’
‘Look here, Celia,’ Peter said. ‘If the ghost of that poor devil really has been haunting the place it’s ten to one it’ll stop bothering us once we’ve buried the remains. Don’t fuss, Aunt Lilian. Of course we’re going to bury the skeleton, and you can fumigate as much as you like. But I do think we oughtn’t to throw up the sponge quite so easily.’
‘Easily!’ said Celia. ‘I don’t know what more you’re waiting for! I shan’t know a quiet moment if I have to stay in this place another day.’
Margaret was looking from Charles to her brother. ‘Go on, Peter. You think we ought to give the place another chance?’
‘I do. Hang it all, we shall look a pretty good set of asses if we bunk back to town simply because we’ve heard a few odd noises, and discovered a skeleton in a priest’s hole.’
‘Shall we?’ said Celia, with awful irony. ‘I suppose we ought to have expected an ordinary little thing like a skeleton?’
‘Not the skeleton, but we might have guessed there’d be a priest’s hole. Be a sport, Celia! If you actually see a ghost, or if any more skulls fall out of cupboards I’ll give in, and take you back to town myself.’
Celia looked imploringly at her husband. ‘I can’t, Chas. You know what I am, and I can’t help it if I’m stupid about these things, but every time I open my wardrobe I shall be terrified of what may be inside.’
‘All right, darling,’ Charles replied. ‘You shan’t be martyred. I suggest you and Margaret and Aunt Lilian clear out to-morrow. I’ll run you up to town, and…’
Celia sat bolt upright. ‘Do you mean you’ll stay here?’
‘That’s rather the idea,’ he admitted.
‘Charles, you can’t!’ she said, agitated. ‘I won’t let you!’
‘I shan’t be alone. Peter’s staying too.’
Celia clasped his arm. ‘No, don’t, Charles. You don’t know what might happen, and how on earth could I go away like that, and leave you here?’
Margaret’s clear voice made itself heard. ‘Why are you so keen to stay?’ she asked.
‘Pride, my dear,’ Charles said. ‘Of course, with me it’s natural heroism. Peter’s trying to live up to me.’
She shook her head. ‘You’ve got something up your sleeve. Neither of you would be so silly as to stay on here, mucking up your holiday, just to prove you weren’t afraid of ghosts.’
‘But it’s getting worse!’ Celia cried. ‘What have you got up your sleeve? I insist on knowing! Chas! Peter!’
Peter hesitated. ‘To tell you the truth, Sis, I don’t quite know. As far as I can make out, Chas has got an idea someone’s at the root of all this ghost business.’
With great deliberation Mrs Bosanquet put down her Patience pack. ‘I may be stupid,’ she said, ‘but I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Who is at the back of what you call this “ghost business,” and why?’
‘Dear Aunt,’ said Charles, ‘that is precisely the problem we hope
to solve by staying here.’
‘All those noises? The picture falling down?’ Margaret said eagerly. ‘You think someone did it all? Someone real?’
‘I don’t know, but I think it’s possible. I may be wrong, in which case I’ll eat my disbelief, and go about henceforward swearing there are such things as ghosts.’
‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ objected Celia, ‘but why on earth should anyone want to make ghost-noises and things at us? And who could have done it? Neither of the Bowers would, and how could anyone else get into the house without us knowing?’
‘Easily,’ said Charles. ‘There’s more than one way in, besides windows.’
‘That quite decides me,’ Mrs Bosanquet announced. ‘No one is a greater believer in fresh air than I am, but if I am to remain in this house, I shall sleep with my windows securely bolted.’
‘I still don’t quite see it,’ Margaret said. ‘I suppose it would be fairly easy to get into the house, but you haven’t explained why anyone should want to.’
‘Don’t run away with the idea that I’m wedded to this notion!’ Charles warned her. ‘I admit it sounds farfetched, but it has occurred to me that someone – for reasons which I can’t explain – may be trying to scare us out of this place.’
There was a short silence. Celia broke it. ‘That’s just like you!’ she said indignantly. ‘Sooner than own you’ve been wrong all these years about ghosts you make up a much more improbable story to account for the manifestations. I never heard such rot in all my life!’
‘Thank you, darling, thank you,’ Charles said gravely.
‘Hold on a minute!’ interrupted Margaret. ‘Perhaps Chas is right.’
Celia almost snorted. ‘Don’t you pay any attention to him, my dear. He’ll tell us next it’s the man who wanted to buy the Priory from us trying to get us out of it.’
‘Well, while we’re on the improbable lay, what about that for a theory?’ demanded Peter. ‘Resourceful sort of bloke, what?’
Mrs Bosanquet resumed her Patience. ‘Whoever it may be, it’s a piece of gross impertinence,’ she said. ‘You are quite right, Charles. I am certainly not going to leave the place because some ill-bred person is trying to frighten me away. The proper course is to inform the police at once.’
‘From my small experience of local constabulary I don’t think that’d be much use,’ said Charles. ‘Moreover what with Margaret’s sinister pal and the egregious Mr Titmarsh, we’ve got quite enough people littered about the grounds without adding a flat-footed bobby to the collection.’
‘Further,’ added Peter, ‘I for one have little or no desire to figure as the laughing-stock of the village. I move that we keep this thing quiet, and do a little sleuthing on our own.’
Margaret waved a hand aloft at once. ‘Rather! I say, this is getting really thrilling. Come on, Celia, don’t be snitchy!’
‘All right,’ Celia said reluctantly. ‘I can’t go away and leave you here, so I suppose I’ve got to give in. But I won’t go upstairs alone after dark, and I won’t be left for one moment by myself in this house, day or night, and Charles isn’t to do anything foolhardy, and if anything awful happens we all of us clear out without any further argument.’
‘Agreed,’ Peter said. ‘What about you, Aunt Lilian?’
‘Provided the dead body is decently interred, and a secure bolt fixed to my door, I shall certainly remain,’ answered Mrs Bosanquet.
‘What could be fairer than that?’ said Charles. ‘If you like you can even superintend the burial.’
‘No, thank you, my dear,’ she replied. ‘I have never yet attended a funeral, and I don’t propose to start with this body in which I have not the smallest interest. Not but what I am very sorry that whoever it was died in such unpleasant circumstances, but I do not feel that it has anything to do with me, and I could wish it had happened elsewhere.’
‘Well, since we’re all making stipulations,’ Margaret put in, ‘I can’t help feeling that I should rather like to have the door between Peter’s room and mine open. D’you mind, Peter?’
‘I can bear it,’ he answered. ‘As for the bones, Chas and I will bury them to-morrow, and we’ll say nothing about them, any of us. See?’
‘Just as you please, my dear,’ Mrs Bosanquet replied. ‘But I cannot help feeling that the police should be told. However, that is for you to decide. Celia, you had better come up to bed. I am coming too, so there is nothing to be alarmed about.’
‘I hate the idea of going up those stairs,’ Celia shuddered.
‘Nonsense!’ said Mrs Bosanquet, and bore her inexorably away.
The two men’s task next morning was sufficiently gruesome to throw a cloud of depression over their spirits. Not even the sight of Mrs Bosanquet sprinkling Lysol in the priest’s hole could lighten the general gloom, and when, after lunch, Charles suggested that he and Peter might go out fishing it was with somewhat forced cheerfulness that Peter agreed.
But an afternoon spent by the trout stream did much to restore their spirits. The fish were rising well, and the weather conditions were ideal.
They worked some way down the stream, and when they at last set out to return to the Priory they found themselves a considerable distance away from it. Charles’ bump of locality, however, served them well, and he was able to lead the way home across country, by a route that brought them eventually to the footpath Michael Strange had so unaccountably failed to find.
It was already nearly time for dinner, and the two men quickened their steps. They had left the footpath, and were just skirting the ruined chapel when the sound of footsteps made them glance back towards the right-of-way. Where they stood they were more or less hidden from the path by a portion of the chapel wall. Thinking the pedestrian one of the villagers on his way home, they were about to continue on their way when the man came into sight round a bend in the path, and they saw that it was none other than the commercial gentleman they had first seen in the taproom of the Bell Inn. This in itself was not very surprising, but the stranger’s behaviour caused both men, as though by tacit consent, to draw farther into the lee of the chapel wall. The small stranger was proceeding rather cautiously, and looking about him as though he expected to meet someone. He paused as he came abreast of the chapel, and peeped into the ruins. Then, after hesitating for a moment he gave a surprisingly sweet whistle, rather like the notes of a thrush. This was answered almost at once from somewhere near at hand; there came a rustling amongst the bushes, and Michael Strange stepped out on to the path from the direction of the Priory gardens.
Charles placed a warning hand on Peter’s arm; Peter nodded, and stayed very still.
‘Any luck?’ inquired the small man, in a low voice.
Strange shook his head. ‘No. We shall have to try the other way again.’
‘Ah!’ said the other gloomily. ‘I don’t half like it, guv’nor, and that’s the truth. Supposing we was to be seen? It would look a bit unnatural, wouldn’t it? It’s risky, that’s what it is. One of them might wake up, and I don’t see myself doing no spook stunts. Clean out of my line, that is. I done some jobs in my time, as you know, but I don’t like this one. It’s one thing to crack a crib, but this job ain’t what I’d call straightforward.’
‘You’ll be all right,’ Strange said rather impatiently. ‘If you’d remember not to waylay me where we might easily be seen together. Go on ahead. I’ll follow.’
‘All right, guv’nor: just as you say,’ the small man replied, unabashed, and moved off down the path.
When Strange had gone Charles looked at Peter. ‘Very interesting,’ he said. ‘What did you make of it?’
‘God knows. It sounded as though they were going to burgle the place, but I suppose it’s not that. It looks very much as though one or both of them were responsible for last night’s picnic.’
‘And they’ll have to “try the other way again,”’ mused Charles. ‘Look here, Peter, are you game to sit up to-night with me, and see what happens?’
‘Of course, but Celia’ll throw a fit.’
‘I’ll join you as soon as she’s asleep. If nothing happens we’ve simply got to repeat the performance till something does. I wish I knew what they were after.’
‘Meanwhile,’ said Peter, consulting his wrist-watch, ‘it’s already half-past seven, and we’re dining with old Ackerley at eight.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘By Jove! Think that mysterious pair will get going in the house while we’re out? I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘No,’ said Charles. ‘The little chap spoke of one of us “waking up.”’
‘All the same,’ Peter said, ‘I move that we don’t stay late at the White House.’
In spite of what Charles said, Peter felt ill at ease about leaving the Priory in the sole charge of the Bowers. Clever crooks, he was sure, would know the movements of their prospective victims. Yet if burglary were meditated surely these particular crooks would find it an easy enough task to break into the Priory without shadowing the place at all hours, and searching for – what? There he found himself up against a blank wall again. Strange and his odd companion had certainly been looking for something, but what it was, or what connexion it could have with a possible burglary he had no idea.
He realised that his mind harped all the time on burglary, and was forced to admit to himself that it was an improbable solution. There was very little of value in the house, and if anything so unlikely as hidden treasure were being sought for it was incredible that the thieves should have waited until the house was tenanted before they made an attempt to find it.
Charles obviously connected the affair of the previous evening with Strange, in which case it looked as though Strange’s primary object was to frighten the tenants out of the house. He wondered whether he would seize the opportunity this dinner-party afforded to stage another, and even more nerve-racking, booby-trap.
Peter arrived at the White House with the rest of his family just as eight o’clock struck. His sisters, who had reviled both him and Charles for staying out so late, drew two sighs of relief.