Dead Man’s Quarry: A Golden Age Mystery Read online

  Felix had no choice but to give way. Isabel mounted her bicycle and started, slowly at first, then gathering speed till her machine was whizzing down the long hill at a breakneck pace. Her hatless red head disappeared behind a clump of trees at the far corner of the downhill road.

  “A reckless young woman,” sighed Dr. Browning. “She seems to lose no opportunity of courting a broken neck. However, having come thus far without a disaster, I suppose she can be trusted to look after herself.”

  “Isabel will never break her neck,” said Nora comfortably. “Don’t you worry, Father. She has no end of presence of mind. As for me, I make no rash promises not to use my brakes. I don’t like the look of this hill.”

  “Isabel is an idiot,” observed Lion thoughtfully. “If she doesn’t look out, she’ll smash her bike to pieces. She won’t care, because it’s only a hired one. But I’m not going to take any risks with mine.”

  He looked fondly at his glittering machine.

  Felix said nothing, but mounted his bicycle in grim silence. It was plain that he did not mean to descend basely to the use of his brakes. He whizzed down the hill after Isabel and reached the turning-point of the road, at least, in safety. Lion, calling to Sir Charles to be sure and not leave the pump behind, followed more cautiously, and Nora and her father, with a backward glance at Charles, who was screwing the cap on his valve, mounted together and followed, gaining rapidly on the unadventurous Lion. Even with the judicious use of her brakes, Nora found the descent quite exciting enough. From the top of the hill, one could see a wide panorama of distant trees and fields lying below one like an enchanted country, protected by range after range of hills. The long, swirling lines of the nearer hills shone clear in the evening sun, and through their gaps the far Black Mountains showed like dim blue wraiths. One descended, and shot downwards towards this enchantment, knowing all the while that one would never reach it, that as one approached, enchantment would retreat ever farther and farther away, calling one on. Trees and hedges closed in on one, shutting out the wide world.

  For sheer delight in the sense of speed and the cool, delicious air flowing past her face, Nora released her brakes, and the bicycle leapt forward like a living thing. She turned the corner, and the road went on and on downhill, varying in steepness, but always taking her down into the valley. The blood flowed warmly through her veins, the air blew cool on her skin, and her brain seemed clear as crystal. She thought happily of the month ahead of her in her old home in Penlow, before the art school opened again; a month that would be spent in sketching, calling on old friends and expeditions with Lion and Isabel to the hills and Radnor Forest. Whizzing down towards the enchanted valley, she counted her blessings and enjoyed a sense of positive, conscious happiness. It was a pity that she had allowed herself to become so fond of old Felix, since he obviously cared more for Isabel’s little finger than for a dozen Noras. But few people lived their lives without once suffering at least a faint intimation of unrequited love; and love was not the only spring of happiness in this lovely world.

  She had left her father far behind, and just beyond the second turn of the road shot past Lion, with a derisive shout. Not to be outdone by his sister, Lion released his brakes and overtook her.

  “Hullo!” he shouted breathlessly, as they sped along side by side.

  “Hullo!” she shouted back, and had no breath for more conversation.

  They turned another corner, past a small whitewashed cottage where a woman stood watching them with the intent, rapturous expression of one who foresees an accident, and found that the wild descent was over. The road stretched tamely ahead of them, a flat, narrow ribbon between tangled hedges of hawthorn and briar. About a hundred yards farther on, Felix sat on the grass at the side of the road with his hands clasped round his knees, watching their approach. There was no sign of Isabel.

  “Hullo! No Isabel,” said Nora. “She probably got up enough speed to carry her all the way to Penlow without turning a pedal.”

  “Dead in a ditch, more likely,” said Lion scornfully. “She’ll come to a bad end, that girl.”

  “Oh come, Lion! If Isabel came to a bad end, nobody would be sorrier than you. So you needn’t pretend to be hardened and cynical.”

  “Oh, she’s not bad,” admitted Lion grudgingly. “For a girl,” he added, hoping thereby to arouse his sister’s wrath. But she was looking along the road ahead of them with a worried expression, and did not hear.

  “I do really wonder where she’s got to. She said she’d sit and wait for us when her wheels refused to go round any more. And she can’t surely have gone farther than we can see without pedalling. . .”

  “Oh, can’t she,” said Lion with a note of unwilling admiration in his voice. “She can do anything, that girl. She’s possessed of a devil. This is where I fall off.”

  He dismounted. But in her anxiety for Isabel, Nora cycled along the road to where Felix was now standing and waiting for her.

  “Hullo, Felix! Where’s Isabel?”

  “I don’t know! Her bike’s a few yards farther on, the other side of that heap of stones. I walked on a bit to look for her, and came back. She must be all right, because her bike’s quite intact.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, then!” Nora was relieved. The reckless Isabel was a bit of a responsibility as a guest. “She’ll turn up. Hullo, here’s father. Wasn’t it a lovely run?”

  “I should have enjoyed it more if you children hadn’t been so reckless. I was expecting every moment to have to jump off and set a broken limb, or worse. Where’s Isabel? Oh, I see. Well, as long as you’re sure she isn’t lying somewhere along the road desperately in need of medical attention, I think I’ll sit down and take a rest.”

  He mounted a stile giving on to a grassy meadow and contemplated the view about him, while Lion, who had sauntered up to join the party, spread out an ordinance survey map on the top bar of the gate and followed the road they had just travelled with a pin.

  “Hullo,” he remarked after a moment. “The quarry I went to look at isn’t far away from here. There’s a footpath a little farther down this road leading straight to it across some fields. I wonder whether one can see the face of it from the road.”

  “Probably,” assented Dr. Browning absently. He did not share his son’s passion for topography. Botany and architecture were his chief interests outside his profession, though the life of a popular country doctor left little room for them. “What a delightful old cottage that is!” he added, looking down the road to where a small half-timbered building stood back behind a long strip of garden. “And how pleasant to see that it hasn’t been robbed of its old slates. I’ve no patience with the vandals who’ll strip an old cottage of its roof to plaster the slates on to some millionaire’s pseudo-Tudor country residence. All in the name of art, too. . . I wish your young friend would put in an appearance, Nora.”

  Even as he spoke there was a flash of blue in the hedge about ten yards down the road, and Isabel jumped down from a stile and came sauntering placidly towards them, making a charming note of colour in the green landscape with her dress of faded blue cotton and hair of golden red.

  “I take it I win,” she greeted them. “I hope you didn’t all think I was dead. I’ve been exploring the fields and hedges. Look what I’ve brought you.”

  She held out a large dock-leaf containing about half a pound of small ripe raspberries.

  “Wild ones. I found lots of them, and they’re delicious.”

  She offered the leaf to Dr. Browning, who helped himself to two or three and asked:

  “Where did you find these?”

  “Oh, just in the next field.” She jerked her head vaguely over her shoulder. “Have some, Felix, and say you forgive me for having a better bicycle than you. I didn’t cheat. I swear I didn’t. And I never touched my brake. Did you?”

  “Of course not,” murmured Felix, oblivious of the raspberries she held out to him in his contemplation of her small shining head.

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p; “Then you both deserve to be certified insane,” declared Dr. Browning severely. “It’s time we were pushing on if we’re to get home before supper time.”

  There was a general movement towards recumbent bicycles. Lion folded his map and stowed it in his breast pocket, and was about to mount his machine when he stopped suddenly and hailed his father, who had made a few yards start.

  “I say! Dad! Hi, everybody! What about the Baronite?”

  “The what?” shouted Dr. Browning, wobbling perilously in the effort to look over his shoulder.

  “The cousin, the Charles, the cow-puncher. . .”

  “Great Scot!” exclaimed Dr. Browning. “I’d forgotten all about him!”

  The five looked at one another and then at the hill they had just descended, hoping to see the missing Charles turning the corner into view. But there was no sign of him.

  “I’m so used to there being only five of us that I never missed him,.” said Felix with compunction. “I say! Do you think we ought—”

  “You’re not going to suggest cycling up that hill to look for him?” said Isabel in tones of horror. “Give him a bit longer, anyhow. Probably he found he had a puncture.”

  The others looked relieved at this simple and obvious explanation, but Lion remarked:

  “He hasn’t got a mending outfit. He’d have walked down the hill and borrowed mine.”

  “Has he had time to walk down the hill?” asked Nora. Her moment of groundless anxiety about Isabel made her quick to fear an accident.

  Felix looked at his watch.

  “Oh, heaps! I really think I’d better go and reconnoitre. We can’t very well go on without him, and it’s no use waiting here doing nothing.”

  “I don’t think I’ll come.” Isabel sat down on the grass and smiled at the worried faces of her friends. “I don’t like the look of that hill. Besides, I do really think Charles can look after himself. We lost him for half an hour the other day, if you remember, and he turned up with a bag of bulls’ eyes he’d been a mile out of his way to get, without telling anybody. He’s probably used to doing things on his own, and it hasn’t occurred to him to think of our anxiety. Not, personally, that I feel any. Give me a cigarette, Felix, before you go.”

  “I think you’re right, Isabel,” said Dr. Browning thoughtfully, “though we can’t very well go on and leave him to his fate, in case he is in trouble of some sort.” The doctor’s private supposition was that Sir Charles, his companions out of the way, had returned to the Tram to refresh himself with something stronger than tea. “Stop this car,” he added quickly, as a small two-seater came down the hill towards them. “They’ll be able to tell us whether they’ve passed a cyclist in distress.”

  The little grey car drew up in response to Lion’s energetic signalling, and the driver, a dark, thin-faced young man with a look of merry intelligence on his lips and eyebrows, leant over the side and said:

  “Hullo!”

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” said the more formal Felix. “But did you pass a cyclist on the hill?”

  “I don’t think we’ve passed a cyclist since we left the last village,” said the stranger thoughtfully, looking at his companion for confirmation. “Certainly not on this hill.”

  “You might have passed him in a ditch and not noticed him,” observed Lion gloomily.

  The young man laughed.

  “We should certainly have seen traces of him. No, I can assure you we passed nobody. There were one or two bicycles standing outside the inn, and one or two men sitting in the porch.”

  The driver paused and looked at his companion, a rather older man with a square, wholesome, reddish face, spectacles and a thatch of fair bristling hair. Then he addressed Dr. Browning:

  “Would you like us to scour the countryside for you? We’re in no hurry.”

  “Oh, no, thanks! The young man’s quite capable of looking after himself. He’ll catch us up all right. We’ll be pushing on.”

  “Well—au revoir,” said the stranger with his pleasant smile, and the car slid forward.

  “Au revoir,” quoted Lion, mounting his bicycle and watching the retreating car. “Not very likely, I should say. That’s a London number. As for the missing Baronite, I expect he’s carousing merrily in the bar-parlour of the Tram.”

  Felix and Isabel laughed, and Nora, though she sternly shook her head at her young brother, exchanged a half-smile with Dr. Browning. None of them was particularly sorry to be deprived of Sir Charles’s company for a mile or two.

  CHAPTER THREE

  AND THEN THERE WERE FIVE

  The Feathers in Penlow is an historic inn. It has, or so tradition says, for no one in these days knows where to look for it, a secret passage; and King Charles II hid in one of its small panelled rooms during his flight after the battle of Worcester. Few old houses in this part of the country lack a room hallowed by the uneasy sleep of a crowned head. Felix had calculated that of the forty-one nights occupied by his flight to Shoreham, the Merry Monarch had spent twenty-three in providing the inns and private dwellings of Penlow and its environs with interest for future antiquarians.

  But even without these advantages the Feathers is a delightful inn, with its sombre brick and timber frontage, its narrow panelled passages and large, low-pitched bedrooms, its mahogany half-tester beds, its profusion of texts, its polished, uneven floors and scent of lavender and furniture polish. No period furniture by Messrs. Gilling & Staple undermines its atmosphere of true antiquity. No posters in unnatural spelling and evil print proclaim it “Ye Oldeste Radnor Inne.” No hordes of motorists and cyclists arrive on Sundays to consume expensive teas and admire what the house-agents describe as period-features. It has no features, in that sense. The hand of the exploiter has not yet reached the Feathers. May it never do so.

  Felix, having booked a room for himself and one for Charles, wandered restlessly to the doorway and looked up and down the road. Dusk was falling, and lamps were lit in the windows across the street. He felt distinctly hungry and tired, and yet unwilling to eat or rest until Charles had arrived and dispelled his slight sense of uneasiness. There was no sign of a cyclist coming up the narrow high street. Felix sighed, and silently anathematized his cousin as an inconsiderate, confounded, irresponsible idiot. Turning back from his fruitless inspection of the street, he encountered the friendly smile of a young man standing at the foot of the stairs. It was the motorist they had stopped on Rodland Hill.

  “Good evening,” said the young man, advancing towards Felix. “Hasn’t your friend turned up yet?”

  “No. I shan’t wait dinner for him much longer. I can’t understand where he can have got to, but I suppose he’s all right.”

  “He couldn’t have lost his way, I suppose?”

  “Impossible. He saw us all start down Rodland Hill, and he knows we’re staying the night here. He may turn up any minute. But—”

  “But you don’t feel quite easy about him. Is he the sort of person to go off on his own without warning?”

  “Well,” replied Felix, instinctively liking the stranger and glad to have somebody to talk the matter over with, now that the Brownings and Isabel had departed to the doctor’s house, “I’ve only known him three days. But I should think he was, rather. It’s frightfully thoughtless of him, if he has. I’m supposed to be going round to the Brownings after dinner, but I don’t like to do anything till he turns up.” Felix spoke gloomily, depressed at seeing the prospect of an evening in Isabel’s company diminish before his eyes.

  “Your other friends?”

  “Yes. He’s Dr. Browning, lives about a quarter of a mile out of the town. Charles and I live at Rhyllan Hall, four miles away, and are going on there to-morrow.”

  “If you care to go to your friends,” suggested the stranger amiably, “we’ll look out for the missing one, and send a message to you when he arrives. We’re staying the night here.”

  “It’s awfully good of you,” said Felix gratefully. “But I think I’d rather st
ay on the spot.” He sighed.

  “Would you care to join us at dinner?” the stranger asked diffidently. “We should be delighted if you would. We’re strangers in this part of the world, and you’ll be able to tell us all the things a tourist should not miss, as they say in the guide-books. Do. It’s much more sensible than waiting about for somebody who may have gone to Timbuctoo or somewhere by mistake. I suppose your missing friend is of an age and character to look after himself?”

  “Oh, quite,” murmured Felix with a faint smile. “Well, thanks awfully. I should like to very much. My name’s Felix Price.”

  “Mine’s John Christmas. And here is my cousin, Sydenham Rampson. I vote we have dinner at once. If your friend hasn’t turned up by the time we’ve finished, we’ll take the car out and scour the countryside.”

  “It’s awfully good of you. I do hope it won’t come to that.”

  “He hopes it will,” said the newcomer confidentially, nodding towards his friend. “Anything for an unquiet life, is his motto. It comes of having no work to do and reading nothing but penny dreadfuls. ‘The Vanished Cyclist,’ or ‘A Mystery of the Welsh Marches.’ He just eats that sort of thing.”

  The fair, sturdy young man shook his head and sighed with an air of doleful pity, and they all proceeded into the large, dim, lamplit dining-room. But for two or three scattered diners at the small tables, they had the room to themselves, and took a comfortable table in a corner where they had a view of the window and the street.

  “You mustn’t take any notice of Rampson’s libels,” said Christmas cheerfully, as they seated themselves. “He’s not human. He’s by way of being a scientist, and has no interest in anything he can see with the naked eye.”

  “That,” said Mr. Rampson equably, “is untrue. I feel a very keen interest in this soup, which is at present perfectly visible without a microscope.”