LOOK ALIVE

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I

THE CAR, a rakish-looking two-seater of uncertain age, drew up outside the house in Surbiton. The driver, David Wiston, was about to get out and ring the bell, when the door was opened and Annabel Dorset appeared. “I'm ready, for once,” she remarked. “It was sweet of you to ring up and offer to take me for a run. Where are we going?”

“I'd take you to the sea, somewhere, if I could spare the petrol,” David replied. “But I'm afraid that's out of the question. What about Fembrake Forest?”

“Fembrake Forest!” Annabel exclaimed. “You're not suggesting that we should pay a call on my great-aunt, surely?”

“Good heavens, no,” David replied. “The old lady would hardly welcome us with open arms, I fancy. The Forest is big enough for us to wander about in it without troubling her. And then we could look in at my father's place. He'll give us a cup of tea.”

Annabel took her seat in the car, and they drove off. They were both young, Annabel in her early twenties, a tall, graceful girl, generally described as attractive. Pretty was not the epithet to be applied to her. She had too much of the Lavant blood in her for that, and the Lavants were a notoriously ugly family. But she had merry grey eyes, an unfailingly cheerful expression, and an irresistible smile. She was quite as much sought after as many far prettier girls of her own age.

Of this she was fully conscious. But, having thoroughly learnt her way about the world—she had served in the W.R.N.S. during the latter part of the war—she did not attribute this entirely to her personal charm. She was very well aware that, as far as any one could be these days, she was an heiress. And this knowledge caused her to regard advances on the part of the opposite sex with a half-amused suspicion. David, for instance. They had known one another for years, and David knew what her prospects were as well as she did herself. She had been expecting him to come to the point for some little time now. Perhaps this was the opportunity he had contrived. A stroll through the secluded glades of Fembrake Forest, culminating in a romantic declaration?

Romantic, yes, but none the less tiresome. Annabel had by no means made up her mind about David. All she would admit, even to herself, was that she liked him the best of any man she had met so far. But that was quite a long way from feeling an ardent desire to marry him. Why couldn't he be content to let things go on as they were? They had always been content in one another's companionship. Why seek anything further?

The answer came with shattering realism. Because it was not herself, but her money, he was after. David was a quiet, rather reserved young man, with the keen appreciation of his own interests derived from his Welsh ancestry. The son of a doctor, he had himself recently qualified in that profession, and was now a house-surgeon at St. Lucy's. He was not at all the sort of person to encumber himself so early in his career with a wife for purely sentimental reasons. The fact of the matter was that he dare not wait, lest he should see the golden apple snatched from the tree before his very eyes.

Annabel had plenty of time for these meditations, for the attention of her companion was concentrated upon the control of the car. David was not a very experienced driver, and had only lately acquired this restive discard from some sportsman's garage. Fortunately Annabel was not of a nervous disposition, and regarded their antics as they negotiated the traffic with more amusement than alarm. Anyway, she was spared the necessity of conversation.

David's intentions were becoming clear to her. Fembrake Forest, followed by a call at Dr. Wiston's house at Ridhurst for a cup of tea! What a delightfully natural setting! But Annabel saw, or thought she saw, the romantic drama which was to be played against it. Saw it with complete detachment, as though she were sitting in a cinema, watching the scenes as they flashed across the screen. The lovers wandering side by side beneath the overshadowing trees. The sudden passionate avowal, the bashful response, as she subsided gracefully into David's embrace. Then the pilgrimage of the affianced couple to David's father, to seek his parental blessing. Annabel wriggled in her seat at the contemplation of such hideous banalities.

She blamed herself for not realising all this before. She should never have accepted David's invitation, for her intuition told her that the expedition was bound to end in a quarrel. If he thought that things were going to be as easy as all that, he would find that he was vastly mistaken. Ridicule, rather than indignation, would be her line. Amazement at the aspirations of a presumptions child. Did he really suppose that she was going to fling herself away upon a man who had hardly set his foot upon the first rung of the ladder of his career? If he did, he had better think again. Meanwhile—oh, for mercy's sake let's talk about something else.

They left the main highway at last, turning off along a less-frequented thoroughfare which, as the signpost indicated, led to Ridhurst. But David did not follow this very far, turning off again into a by-road as soon as they reached the outskirts of the Forest. “I know just the place,” he explained. “I used to ride all round here on my bicycle in the old days, when I was at home for the holidays. I don't suppose there's been much change since then. Let's go and see.”

Annabel raised no objection. If the situation had to be faced, the scene hardly mattered. They followed the by-road for a couple of miles or so, passing only a few isolated houses on the way. The Forest was by no means continuous woodland, rather wide groves of trees interspersed with stretches of open ground covered with gorse and bracken. Suddenly David applied the brakes and the car drew up jerkily at the side of the road. “This is the place!” he exclaimed.

He had pulled up at a low stile, beyond which a footpath wound through the trees. They got out of the car, climbed the stile, and set off along the footpath. It was obviously to some extent a public right of way, as for some distance it was littered with orange-peel and empty cigarette cartons. However, after a while these evidences of a refined civilisation were left behind, and they found themselves in what might have been almost virgin country. The path had led them to the edge of a sheet of water, long but not very wide, with trees and undergrowth stretching down to the water's edge. Through a narrow gap in these they caught a glimpse of a large house on the farther side of the lake. It was a hideous castellated structure, without a single redeeming feature. The tall beech-trees surrounding it seemed to express by their grace the clumsiness of man's handiwork. Beyond the house, in the distance, could be seen between the trunks of the beech-trees the outline of a high wall, capped with fragments of broken glass, glittering evilly where they caught the sun.

Annabel, who was not without artistic appreciation, frowned at this spectacle. “Whoever desecrated such a lovely spot by building a house like that!” she exclaimed. “And that cruel wall! What is it, David? An asylum for criminal lunatics? Or does somebody really live there?”

David shrugged his shoulders. “I couldn't say,” he replied off-handedly. “I suppose I must have seen the house before, but I never noticed it particularly. I dare say some trees have been cut down since I was last here. What about a bathe in the lake?”

“My dear man!”Annabel protested. “What a preposterous suggestion! Your lake looks to me more mud than water, and it's probably full of slimy weeds. I hate bathing in fresh water. Besides, I haven't brought a bathing-dress with me, and I don't fancy myself as a nudist. But if you feel you must take the plunge, don't let me stop you.”

“I'm more than tempted,” David replied. “Just a few minutes' swim, and then dry off in the sun. Sure you'll be all right?”

“Of course I shall,” said Annabel. “What do you think is likely to happen to me? What I'm wondering is whether you'll be all right. Never mind, if you get caught in the weeds, just sing out, and I'll come and rescue you.”

David went off among the bushes, she supposed to find a secluded spot in which to undress. It was what the town-dweller describes as a perfect summer's afternoon, with a cloudless sky and the temperature somewhere in the seventies. Under the trees nearby Annabel found a bed of withered leaves, and, having satisfied herself that the spot was comparatively free from insects, curled herself up upon it. She felt half-relieved and, for some reason she could hardly explain, half-resentful. Things hadn't turned out at all as she had expected. Unless the invitation to bathe in this unfrequented environment had been the first step towards seduction. David being the sort of person he was, that was quite unthinkable.

Where she lay, it was extraordinarily silent. At the height of the summer afternoon not a bird twittered. No sound came from that appalling house, now mercifully hidden from her eyes. She imagined herself as Ariadne, abandoned—rather to her relief—by Theseus on Naxos, but with very little chance of Bacchus appearing to her from among the trees. The fancy pleased her, and she played with it for a while, until it became merged in other nonsensical visions.

She woke up, to find David standing beside her. “Hallo, Theseus!” she murmured dreamily. “So you've come back? That's all wrong, you know. You ought to have gone on to Ridhurst. Your father, watching for the approach of your two-seater, and seeing its black hood raised, would have flung himself out of the window for grief.”

David stared at her. His strictly practical education had included no smattering of Greek mythology. “What are you talking about? You've been to sleep, that's what's the matter with you. You'd much better have had a bathe.”

Annabel shook her head as she got up. “Don't feel like it,” she replied tersely. “Where do we go from here?”

David shrugged his shoulders. “It's up to you. Personally, I feel like a bit of exploring. Let's go on and see where this track leads to.”

It was all one to Annabel, and she followed him as he moved off. Only single file was possible, for the track was narrow, and so little frequented that in several places they had to push away the undergrowth to make their way through. The track twisted about among trees and brushwood, through which at intervals they caught a glimpse of the lake. At its head was a ruinous structure which they took to be a boat-house. But the track did not approach it closely enough to allow of investigation. Having negotiated a final bend, they found themselves confronted by another low stile. Beyond this was a narrow road, hardly more than a lane, running roughly parallel to the one on which they had left the car.

They climbed the stile, and Annabel looked about her. “Have you the remotest idea where we are?” she asked.

“Well, not exactly,” David replied. “I don't remember having come this way before. But now we're here, let's see if we can't find another way back, round the other side of the lake.”

They turned to the right, and followed the road for some little distance, to find that it meandered rather purposely through the forest. Finding no sign of a path leading in the direction they desired, they were about to turn back. Then, without warning, they came to a gateway on the right, beyond which stretched a sandy drive. And by the side of the gateway there was a post surmounted by a board, bearing the words, “To The Brake.”

Annabel stared at this, then rounded upon David. “You old humbug!” she exclaimed. “You knew all the time!”

“What's come to you now?”David replied with an air of injured innocence. “What am I supposed to have known all the time?”

“You know perfectly well,” she exclaimed petulantly, pointing at the board. “The Brake I That's where my great-aunt lives.”

David shook his head. “My dear girl, I know nothing of your great-aunt beyond what you've told me yourself, that her name was Mrs. Lavant, and that she had a house somewhere in Fembrake Forest. That we should have stumbled on the estimable lady's abode is quite accidental. Now that we have done so, would you like to pay a dutiful call?”

“Not I!” Annabel replied. “I've never set eyes on her in my life. She must be eighty if she's a day, and I don't suppose she has the dimmest interest in her great-niece. Do you suppose The Brake is that hideous house we saw just now?”

David hesitated. “Might be. But I think we must have come farther than that. I expect we're on the farther side of that high wall with the broken glass on top of it. There's nothing to prevent us going down the drive and seeing for ourselves. It's not marked private.”

“Only a little way, then,” said Annabel. “I should hate my great-aunt to think that I was butting in.” With the furtive air of a pair of conspirators they passed through the gateway and started up the drive. Before they had gone very far, it turned out that David had been right. They had rounded the end of the wall, which now appeared to their right, running parallel to the drive. Beyond it they could make out the roof of the house they had already seen. And, as they progressed, they discovered on their left a second lake, very similar in size and shape to the first. And, facing this lake, with a lawn sloping gently down to it, was another house, smaller and of more pleasing architecture. “That'll be The Brake,” David remarked. “Not at all a bad-looking place. Care to have a closer view of it?”

“I feel horribly guilty,” Annabel replied. “But there seems to be nobody about. Let's go on just a wee bit farther.” The front entrance to The Brake was on the side of the house farthest from the lawn, and towards this the drive wound through the trees, never diverging far from the wall. But this was not the side they wanted to see, for the lake frontage appeared far more enticing. They came at last to a ragged shrubbery, through which a path led off from the drive in the direction of the lawn. “Let's go along there and have a peep,” David whispered.

But Annabel shook her head. “I'm not going a step farther. You can go if you like. But if you're caught, I shall disown you.”

David nodded, and crept off on tiptoe. Annabel entered the shrubbery and took up a position where she wasn't very likely to be noticed. Left alone, she felt a strong inclination to panic. How on earth could she explain her presence if her great-aunt, or any one else for that matter, bore down upon her? It was with difficulty that she restrained herself from taking to her heels and bolting back down the drive by the way she had come. She was still struggling with the impulse when David returned, grinning broadly. “There's only one person about, and she's fast asleep,” he whispered quietly. “It must be your great-aunt, I think. Come and look for yourself. It's quite safe.”

For a moment Annabel held back. But her curiosity got the better of her, and she allowed David to lead her along the path. They reached the farther edge of the shrubbery, and peeped out between the bushes.

The lawn lay spread before them, with the lake beyond. In the centre of the lawn was an elaborate hammock, fringed and tasselled, swung from a complicated framework, with a brightly-coloured canopy above. In the hammock lay a woman, dressed in white, and wearing an almost barbaric profusion of jewellery. Her attitude was one of complete repose, and her face was hidden by the newspaper she had allowed to fall upon it.

Annabel giggled faintly. “Yes, that's Great-aunt Claire,” she whispered. “There's a photograph of her at home, which shows her all got up with trinkets like that. She was an actress, you know, before she was married. Well, I shall be able to tell my astonished parents that I've seen her, anyhow. Now let's get away quickly before any one comes.”

They retraced their steps through the shrubbery to the drive, which, as they found, led on past the front entrance to the house. “There's another gate, I expect,” said David. “If there is, it must be on the road where we left the car. We may as well go on and get off the premises that way.”

Once again his sense of direction proved correct. They followed the drive for some little distance, with the forbidding wall never far away on the right. Then ahead of them appeared the expected gate, and beside it, hidden among the trees, a gloomy building, not unlike a medieval castle in miniature, and evidently the lodge. As they hurried towards the gate, the door of the lodge opened, and a man emerged to intercept their passage.

He was a rough-looking type, but there was something about his appearance that fascinated Annabel. A ridiculous flash of her daydream returned to her. This was Bacchus, then, though he seemed very much alone, and was certainly unaccompanied by any jovial convoy of Bacchanals. Nor did he display any trace of the exuberance of the wine-god. He was young, perhaps a few years older than David, with a shock of dark curly hair and a pair of sardonic deep-blue eyes. He stood there, with his hands on his hips and elbows outspread, frowning menacingly. There was no avoiding him, and David and Annabel came to an awkward halt.

The man eyed them contemptuously. “Thought you'd slip out without being seen, did you?” he growled in a deep and curiously resonant voice. “Who might you be, and what have you been a-doing of?”

Annabel looked at him with increasing interest. He was wearing a faded blue shirt, open at the neck and revealing a hairy chest, a pair of dirty slacks, and gum-boots. His appearance and articulation were rough, but for some indefinable reason it seemed to Annabel that this roughness was deliberately assumed. But to David the encounter seemed highly disconcerting. He flushed and hesitated, and when he spoke his voice was high-pitched and querulous. “You've no right to talk like that. We're doing no harm. Let us pass, please.”

But the man made no move, and his tone became even more offensive. “Gam! Don't you try to play the high and mighty with me. You and your young woman are trespassing, as you know well enough. And I'm Mrs. Lavant's keeper, I am, and my orders is that I'm to give folks like you in charge.”

“Nonsense!” David exclaimed hotly. “If you're Mrs. Lavant's keeper, you ought to have learnt to speak civilly to your betters.”

“Betters?” the man sneered. “I'm not so sure of that. You and your girl may be dressed-up folk, but it's my belief you're up to no good. Looking around to see what you can pick up, I dare say. But I'm not standing for any nonsense like that. You'll come into my lodge and stop there while I call for the police.”

“We shall do nothing of the kind!”David exclaimed, with an angry glearn in his eyes as he took a step forward. But the keeper merely glanced at him contemptuously. “I'd keep quiet, if I was you,” he said. “Why, I could pick you up with one hand and break your neck like a rabbit. Just you do as I say and come along with me.”

It was obvious to Annabel that David was quite incapable of dealing with the situation. He was, in fact, making a perfect fool of himself. Now, if further unpleasantness was to be avoided, there was only one thing to be done: to make herself known to the keeper's mistress, and to secure her intervention with her surly servant.

Annabel turned and ran lightly up the drive, half-expecting to be pursued by the keeper, whom her mind still envisaged as Bacchus. But no footsteps followed her, and she reached the house without seeing any one on her way. She ran on past it, and turned along the path through the shrubbery, queer problems racing through her brain. How did one address a great-aunt whom one had never met? One could hardly awake a sleeping stranger with the words, “Oh, Auntie Claire, I'm your great-niece Annabel.” But perhaps she had woken up by now.

She hadn't. The white-clad and bejewelled form still lay motionless in the hammock, with the newspaper lying undisturbed upon the face. Annabel cheeked her speed, and walked decorously towards the hammock. She had made up her mind to address her great-aunt respectfully in the first place as Mrs. Lavant. She reached the hammock and hesitated, awed by the complete inertness of the recumbent figure. The long chain of beads which lay on her ample bosom were undisturbed by any rise and fall due to respiration. Tentatively she stretched out her hand and removed the newspaper.

To her eager gaze was revealed the face of an old woman, so elaborately made up that all evidence of extreme age was obliterated. That it was the face of the photograph, taken many years earlier, there could be no doubt. But the immobility of those features struck Annabel with a cold rush of fear. She realised that her great-aunt must have lapsed into unconsciousness. More disconcertingly still, she might even be dead.

II

ANNABEL WAS NOT the sort of person to dither in the face of emergency. Her thoughts came rapidly, the first thing was to summon a doctor. David? David was apparently still in altercation with the keeper. No good going back there and recounting her discovery. The keeper, in his insufferable obstinacy, probably wouldn't believe her. There must be help nearer at hand. A companion, or a maid, somebody. She turned from the hammock towards the house. A french window stood open, and towards this she ran, calling as she went. No answer came. She reached the window and entered the house, to find herself in a wide and lofty hall. “Is any one here?” she called at the top of her voice. Faint echoes resounded from the walls, but no answering sound or movement. She caught sight of a brass dinner-gong and snatching the stick that hung beside it, beat upon it desperately. The resultant clamour filled the house with a pulsating ocean of noise. As it died away she waited tensely. But even this deafening summons evoked no reply, and the house reverted to its uncanny stillness.

As she looked helplessly around her she perceived a table, half-hidden by a curtain, and on it a telephone. Dr. Wiston, David's father! Her great-aunt was probably his patient. Annabel didn't know his number, but the exchange would, of course. She snatched up the instrument, vaguely noticing as she did so that it seemed a very old-fashioned affair. “Hallo, exchange, hallo!” she called. “This is an urgent call. Put me through to Dr. Wiston at Ridhurst, please.”

She heard a clicking noise, but no acknowledging voice. She repeated her message, but the silence persisted, broken only by a renewed clicking. At last she decided that the line must be out of order. The Fates were conspiring against her attempt to seek aid. She flung the instrument down, and turned despairingly towards the window by which she had entered.

Then, with a gasp of relief, she ran out. David had unaccountably materialised, and was standing by the hammock. Swiftly she joined him, to find him holding her great-aunt's wrist and frowning at the inanimate features. He looked up as she came. “Oh, here you are!” he muttered incoherently. “I say, this is pretty grim. The woman's dead.”

“There's nobody in the house,” Annabel replied wildly. “I tried to telephone, but the line's out of order. The only person about the place seems to be that awful keeper. We shall have to get him. Where is he?”

David shook his head in complete bewilderment. “In his lodge, I think. The fellow's behaviour is most extraordinary. I never met such a truculent brute in my life. But when you ran off he didn't say any more. Just turned away and strode into the lodge. He'll have telephoned for the police by now, I suppose. I don't like it a bit.”

It seemed to 'Annabel that David was proving a broken reed. The keeper, however offensive he might be, would probably be more capable of dealing with the situation. “I'm not exactly enjoying myself either,” she replied sharply. “But we must do something. The keeper may know where the domestic staff are to be found. Anyhow, if there's a telephone in the lodge, it surely can't be out of order too. My idea was to get your father to come.”

David nodded with an air of relief. “You've got it. He'll know what to do. All right, then. Come along.” They hastened down the drive, seeing no sign of human activity. They reached the lodge, to find the door shut and all quiet within. David hammered on the wooden panel, but no reply came. He tried the door, to find it locked. “We can't get in,” he said helplessly. “And that brute of a keeper doesn't seem to be about. I say, wait a minute!”He looked up at the frowning walls of the building and pointed. “There's no telephone line running to the place,” he continued excitedly. “And there aren't any poles beside the road either. The fellow was bluffing when he said he was going to ring up the police.”

“I feel as if we'd blundered into a mad-house,” Annabel replied wearily. “There's only one thing for it. We shall have to drive to Ridhurst in the car. That is, if it's still there and hasn't vanished by this time.”

They passed through the gateway, and set off along the road towards the spot where they had left the car. Before they had gone many yards, they passed the end of the wall, and a short distance farther on came to a second gate, secured with a chain and padlock. Attached to the gate was a board with the inscription, “The Retreat. Strictly Private.”

“The Retreat?”David remarked. “That must be the other house we saw across the lake, the ugly one. I don't think it's much good trying there, for that glass-topped wall rather suggests a barrier to intercourse between the two houses. We'd better keep going until we get to the car.”

Rather to Annabel's surprise, the car was still standing as they had left it. Her adventures had been so topsy-turvy that any normal happening was becoming unexpected. They got into the car, which rather unusually responded to the starter, and drove off at speed towards Ridhurst.

They covered the three miles or thereabouts in a few minutes, and drew up at Dr. Wiston's door. Avoiding the ceremony of ringing the bell, David led the way through the garden entrance, and into the house by a side door. Dr. Matthew Wiston was in his study, writing at a desk. He was a middle-aged man, slight and of athletic build, with a capable expression and twinkling eyes. As the door opened and his unannounced visitors burst in, he looked up sharply. “Why, bless my soul!” he exclaimed. “Make yourselves comfortable, and I'll ring for tea.”

David shook his head impatiently. “Can't do that. Father. We want you to come with us at once. We've just stumbled on Annabel's great-aunt, Mrs. Lavant, at The Brake, and found her dead. She's a patient of yours?”

This sounded incomprehensible, but Matthew Wiston had more experience than his son of emergencies. “Mrs. Lavant has never been a patient of mine,” he replied as he rose from his chair. “I know her, for I have met her at Sir Julius Blackrock's. But if you say that the good lady is dead, it would seem that there is not very much I can do for her.”

“Oh, you must come. Dr. Wiston!” Annabel pleaded. “There's nobody there, only a rough sort of keeper, and he seems to have vanished. We can't leave her alone like that, in a hammock on the lawn.”

Matthew Wiston was greatly puzzled. Not so much by the news of Mrs. Lavant's death, for she was a very old woman. But these two young people had evidently been through some experience which had given them a considerable shock. It was incredible that there should be nobody there. He knew little of Mrs. Lavant, but enough to be aware that she did not live alone at The Brake. It would be as well for him to go and find out how things really stood. No doubt one of the other doctors in the town had attended Mrs. Lavant. He could learn which of them it was, and turn the job over to him. “All right, I'll come,” he said shortly. “I'll get my car out. It's more reliable than David's rattletrap. Come along.”

They set out, and reached the entrance to The Brake. The gate was shut, the position into which it swung naturally unless hooked back. Since there was no sign of the keeper, and the lodge appeared to be shut up and deserved, David got out to open it. As he did so, he saw on the sandy surface of the drive the track of tyres, which had certainly not been there when he and Annabel had come away. “Someone has got here before us,” he remarked, as he resumed his seat in the car.

“Eh?” his father replied. “Then there's no need for us to butt in. Still, as we've got as far as this, we may as well go on, I suppose.”

He drove along the drive, and pulled up at the front door, where another car already stood. The three of them got out and David rang the bell. They waited, but there was no reply. “I told you there was no one in the house!” Annabel exclaimed fretfully. “Let's go round, through the shrubbery, and you'll see.”

She and David led the way, and Matthew Wiston followed them, expecting to find one of his fellow-practitioners on the spot. They reached the farther edge of the shrubbery, and Annabel uttered a half-stifled cry of amazement, “Oh!”

The sight which greeted them was certainly strange enough. Mrs. Lavant was sitting up in the hammock, her legs dangling over the edge. She was dressed completely in white, down to her shoes and stockings, and the jewellery with which she was generously adorned flashed in the sun. She was talking vivaciously to a young man who held a note-book and pencil in his hands, while another young man, equipped with a camera, was moving round taking photographs of her from various angles. A third man, middle-aged and tall, stood in the background, surveying the proceedings with a somewhat sardonic expression.

At the sound of Annabel's cry, Mrs. Lavant looked round and frowned at the three standing on the edge of the lawn. “Go away!” she exclaimed in a deep contralto, waving an arm upon which the many bangles tinkled musically. “I only see people by appointment. Write and tell me what it is you want. I can't attend to you now.” And without troubling any more about them, she reassumed her ingratiating smile and continued her conversation with the reporter.

Clearly there was nothing for it but undignified retreat. Crestfallen and in silence the intruders retraced their steps to Matthew Wiston's car and drove off. Not until the gate had again opened and they were on the road outside, did any of them speak. “Have you young people been pulling my leg?”Matthew Wiston asked severely.

It was Annabel who replied, half-hysterically, “Oh, no, Dr. Wiston! She was dead, I'm sure she was. And David said so too. Didn't you, David? We can't both have been dreaming.”

“Mrs. Lavant now displays every symptom of exuberant vitality,” Matthew Wiston remarked with some acidity. “I'm very much relieved that she didn't seem to recognise me. I should have found explanation more than difficult. We'll go home and have tea, and between you, you can tell the whole story as coherently as you can.”

As they sat in the doctor's study, they recounted the afternoon's adventures. Annabel did most of the talking, for David seemed rather ashamed of the part he had played, and was in consequence inclined to be sulky. Matthew Wiston listened with kindly sympathy. He had wondered, before now, whether David had thoughts of marrying this girl. It seemed to his acute perception that the afternoon had done nothing to increase any mutual affection. Rather the reverse, for Annabel seemed to blame David for their experiences. “It was David who suggested we should go and have a peep at The Brake,” she complained. “If he hadn't been so inquisitive, all this wouldn't have happened. I believe he knew all the time who lived there.”

“I didn't I “David replied. And then, somewhat inconsequentially, he added: “After all, the woman is your great-aunt, not mine.”

“That's got nothing to do with it,” said Annabel firmly. “I should never have gone inside the place if it hadn't been for you. And then, when we met that keeper, you were so silly. If you'd been more tactful, and apologised to him for trespassing, he'd have let us out. I'm sure he's not really so disagreeable as he pretended to be. And when you saw her you said definitely that she was dead, you know you did.”

Matthew Wiston hastened to interpose. “Elderly people, when they are asleep, often look alarmingly death-like. And David hasn't enough experience yet to recognise death at first sight, without detailed examination. I'm not surprised that you both got rather a nasty shock. However, you'll soon get over it.”

The two young people drove back from Ridhurst, neither of them inclined to conversation, and David left Annabel at her house in Surbiton. Annabel did not ask him in, nor did she speak of her adventures until after dinner, when she was alone with her parents in the lounge. Her father. Henry Dorset, was a man of fifty, well set-up and good-looking. He was a director of a firm of merchants in the City, and though he took no very active part in the business, attended at the office two or three days a week. His hobby was yachting on a modest scale, and during the war he had served in the R.N.V.R., spending most of his period of service in a minor post at the Admiralty.

Annabel's mother, Irene Dorset, was a couple of years younger than her husband. She was a cheerful, pleasant-faced woman, her appearance somewhat marred by her inheritance of the Lavant features, always a shade distressing in the female members of that family. She was a woman of wide interests, allowing nothing, however, to intervene between herself and her husband and daughter. It had already struck her that Annabel had been strangely reticent about her afternoon excursion. But she was far too wise to ask questions. If, as she half-expected, David had brought himself to the pitch of a proposal, she would hear about it in her daughter's own good time.

It was Annabel who broached the subject. “I met Great-aunt Claire this afternoon,” she remarked in an elaborately casual tone.

Her father was glancing sleepily at an evening paper as he smoked a pipe. But at this amazing announcement, he started bolt upright, his pipe dropping from his mouth as he did so. “Confound it!” he exclaimed, groping on the floor. “Your great-aunt? What are you talking about? Where on earth did you come across the old lady?”

“David says it was an accident,” Annabel replied. “I'm furious with him, for he led us both to make fools of ourselves. I've had such a ridiculous adventure that I'm beginning to believe I must have dreamt the whole thing. I met Great-aunt Claire at her own house, and I'll tell you what happened there.”

Her parents listened to her story with unconcealed amazement. “I never heard of such a thing in my life!”Henry Dorset exclaimed when she had finished. “Whatever possessed the pair of you to butt in like that? It's my belief the old girl's a witch, and that she enchanted you. Serve you right, too. And you dragged Matthew Wiston there to certify her death. I wonder he didn't certify you both as lunatics.”

“It was David who said she was dead,” Annabel replied. “And, having just qualified, I thought he ought to know.”

“Whereas she was merely enjoying an afternoon nap,” said her father scornfully. “My own personal sentiment is that it's a pity he wasn't right. Well, she didn't know who you were, that's a comfort.”

“She didn't even recognise Dr. Wiston, whom she knows,” Annabel replied. “She was far too busy showing off to her visitors to take any notice of us. I'm going to bed to try to sleep it all off.”

Irene Dorset very shortly followed her example, leaving her husband puffing thoughtfully at his pipe. Annabel's adventure had disturbed him more deeply than he cared to reveal. That young fellow David. Had he beguiled the girl to The Brake for some mysterious purpose of his own? According to Annabel, he seemed to have behaved rather wildly throughout. Anyhow, inexperienced though he might be, he ought to have known the difference between sleep and death.

It was many years since Henry Dorset had met Mrs. Lavant, once so well known as Claire Gabriel, the actress. She and the Dorsets had nothing in common, and they had kept out of one another's way. Although Mrs. Lavant was Irene's aunt, they never corresponded, and neither of the Dorsets had visited her at The Brake. They had heard little of Mrs. Lavant, except on that occasion three years ago when The Brake had acquired a momentary publicity. That had been a rather unsavoury story, revealing if not actual cruelty, at least a callous lack of consideration on Mrs. Lavant's part. But, even before that, it had been notorious that she was apt to behave with the reverse of kindliness towards those dependent upon her.

She was a remarkably selfish old woman, of that there could be no possible doubt. And vain too, as her adornment and her behaviour before the camera showed clearly enough. The universe and its inhabitants revolved about herself. And it seemed, from the vitality she displayed, that she might live for ever.

Henry Dorset allowed his thoughts to dwell on that subject. He didn't really grudge Mrs. Lavant her continued existence. But always at the back of his mind was the knowledge that on her death the income she enjoyed would revert to Irene. She and her family could put it to good use. There was Annabel to be thought of. Both her parents believed that she was rather aimlessly drifting towards an engagement to David. Mainly, perhaps, because comparatively few eligible young men had come her way. David was a decent young fellow, but, with pardonable pride, her father felt that Annabel was worthy of someone more distinguished than the son of a provincial doctor. Given more money to spend, her parents could take her about-give her the opportunity of meeting people beyond the suburban environment of Surbiton.

But, while Mrs. Lavant lived, that must remain a castle in the air. Back then to Annabel's unaccountable adventure. She was far too sensible a girl to suffer from hallucination. Incredible though the suggestion seemed, was it possible that she and David had not been mistaken? That the unfortunate affair of three years ago had been repeated. That a woman, some member of Mrs. Lavant's household, had lain dead in the hammock? Mrs. Lavant wouldn't have allowed a trifle like that to interfere with her afternoon's enjoyment. Annabel had never seen her great-aunt, and it was to be supposed that David hadn't either. They had probably both been too flustered to look very closely. That the woman they had seen then was Mrs. Lavant was no more than an assumption on their part. It might well have been a companion, or merely a visitor.

Of course, all this was sheer nonsense. If any one had died at The Brake, even Mrs. Lavant would be constrained to do something about it. But once again a faint shadow of mystery had fallen across the place. Obviously it was not a matter to be reported to the police, who would demand to be shown a non-existent body. Nor for that matter, as Henry Dorset realised, was it any affair of his. But he felt a natural curiosity, and an overwhelming desire to discuss the situation with some sympathetic but disinterested friend.

He knew the very man in whom to confide. While serving at the Admiralty, he had come into contact with a certain Desmond Merrion, who had occupied an important post in the Intelligence branch. Merrion's almost uncanny aptitude for solving the knottiest problems had become proverbial. Henry Dorset had kept in touch with him since then, and knew that he was frequently in London, where he rented rooms in the St. James's district. He determined to find out in the morning if Merrion was at hand.

In fulfilment of this resolve, he rang up the number from his office. The call was answered by Newport, Merrion's faithful retainer, who to Dorset's relief told him that his master was at home. Merrion came to the telephone, and uttered a hearty greeting. “Hallo, Dorset! Only the other day I was thinking that it was quite a while since I'd heard from you. How are things with you and the family?”

“We're all flourishing, thanks,” Dorset replied. “I'm very glad to have found you in London. If you can spare the time, want your opinion on what seems a rather queer story. Can we meet somewhere?”

“Of course we can,” said Merrion unhesitatingly. “You know my voracious appetite for queer stories. Come along here as soon as you like, and stay to lunch with me. That will give us plenty of time to talk.”

III

WHEN DORSET reached Merrion's most comfortable rooms, he found his host alone and waiting for him. “I'm delighted to see you again,” he said. “We'll have a glass of sherry before lunch while you spin your yarn. You can talk here in perfect confidence, and without the slightest fear of interruption.”

“That's most awfully good of you, Merrion,” Dorset replied. “Now that it comes to it, I hardly know where to begin. I'm afraid I shall have to inflict on you a certain amount of family history, if it won't bore you to extinction.”

Merrion laughed. “Family history is often most entertaining. Go ahead in your own way.”

Dorset took a sip from the glass which his host had poured out for him. “We needn't go further back than the last century,” he began. “In Yorkshire, somewhere about 1830, a boy, Oliver Lavant, was born. We don't know definitely who his people were, but tradition has it that his father was a. prosperous farmer. Anyway, the boy did not follow the plough, but turned his attention to industry, in which he proved highly successful. He became a manufacturer on a fairly extensive scale, and prospered exceedingly. Before his death he sold his business for what in those days was a very considerable sum.

“Oliver Lavant died in 1894. Perhaps because in his earlier years he was too busy making money to have any time to spare for romance, he gave no thought to marriage until he was forty. By that marriage he had two sons, a second Oliver, born in 1871, and William, born in 1876. There were no other children. It may have been because neither of his sons displayed any natural aptitude for business that their father sold out.

“The dispositions of the two sons were entirely different, and one imagines that they were mutually antagonistic. Oliver junior was a charming person, universally popular and his father's favourite. Unfortunately, as I have said, he displayed no enthusiasm for the factory. Agriculture being in his blood, he took to farming, mainly, I fancy, as a means of enjoying a comfortable and rather ineffective life. He was one of those people who are always on the verge of doing great things which somehow never come off. His principal achievement was marrying a wife as charming as himself, by whom he had an only child, a daughter, Irene. Both her parents died not very long after I married her. We, too, have an only child, a daughter, Annabel. You may remember having met her in the last year of the war, when she was in the Wrens.”

“I remember very well meeting your daughter,” Merrion replied. “And a very jolly girl I thought she was.”

“We're proud of her,” said Dorset. “She's twenty-four this year and naturally we're beginning to wonder whom she'll marry. However, that's by the way. We come now to old Oliver's second son, William. He was the typical hero, or villain, of the romantic novel of his period. His father died when he was eighteen. Three years later, a few days after his twenty-first birthday, when he became his own master, he astonished his acquaintances by marrying a village maiden, Mary Stoke. It is alleged that he had previously seduced her, but whether that is true or not I can't say. This young woman did not survive very long, for in 1898 she died in giving birth to a daughter, Althea.

“William was thus left a widower, with an infant girl on his hands. However, this responsibility did not weigh very heavily upon him. He was living in London, and engaged a series of females, from wet-nurse to governess, to look after the child as she grew up. He had other interests which claimed his attention, for he had fallen under the spell of the stage. Not as an actor himself, but as a dilettante playwright and critic. Although this became his passion, it was never a very profitable means of livelihood. But he had his own income, as I'll explain in a few minutes, so that didn't matter very much. The point I want to make is that all his friends were people of the stage and of the minor literary and journalistic circles. He had no interest in his brother or his family, and they very rarely met. I believe that Oliver junior and his wife suggested that their niece, Althea, should spend some part of her time with them. But, for some reason or other, William refused to countenance the arrangement. Disliked the idea of any sort of family tie, I dare say.

“Then, when Althea was sixteen, and already fairly headstrong, the first World War broke out. It was her father's intention to have her trained for the stage, but the war put an end to that. Two years later she hurled herself into some form of war work, I don't know what. She took to bringing various men in uniform to the house. And one fine morning in 1917 William found on his desk a note from her, announcing that she had eloped with a boy-friend whom William particularly disliked, a thorough waster of the name of Jack Rayner.

“It was too late to do anything about it, for by the time William got on the track of the couple they were already married, Althea having stated a false age. William took a firm line, insisting that having made their own bed, they must lie on it. He made it clear that under no circumstances would that piece of furniture be accommodated in his own house. What became of Althea and her husband for the next year or so, I don't know. But Jack Rayner contrived to get himself killed in the last days of the war, and in 1919 Althea gave birth to a posthumous boy, who was christened Roy. One supposes that she subsisted on a pension, possibly eked out by an allowance from William. At all events the disconsolate widow did not return to her father's roof.

“Meanwhile, not very long before Roy's entry into the world, William Lavant had once more embarked upon the troubled waters of matrimony. This time he had chosen as his consort a woman older than himself, nearly ten years older, I believe, a then well-known actress, Claire Gabriel. On her marriage she retired from the stage, and she and her husband continued to live in London, keeping company with what must have been a raffish lot. Again I must emphasise that my wife's side of the family saw very little of them. William gave them no encouragement, and his new wife even less. She was, and is, a domineering woman, and I imagine it didn't take her very long to get her husband completely under her thumb. It was quite certain that she had no use for her stepdaughter.

“Then, in the early thirties, Althea was killed in a motorcar smash, and the problem of the orphaned Roy arose. Someone had to become responsible for his maintenance, and the obvious person was his grandfather. One might have supposed that he would have boarded him out somewhere, but things didn't turn out that way. As soon as Claire Lavant set eyes on him, with the sudden and unaccountable impulse to which women of that type are subject, she took an instant fancy for him. He seems to have been quite a prepossessing child, with good looks and ingratiating manners. Claire Lavant insisted that she and William should take charge of him.

“As might have been expected, her infatuation soon wore off. I don't know any details of the life the three of them led for the next few years, but there is reason to believe that his step-grandmother's treatment of Roy oscillated between bullying him and ignoring his existence. What is quite certain is that he was allowed to drift into foolish ways. A case of evil communications corrupting good manners, I take it. His grandparents' associates were hardly of the type to exert a steadying influence on a growing lad. Anyhow, there was a particularly unpleasant scandal, which found its way into the newspapers. Something about a valuable fur coat which disappeared from a night club, and was subsequently offered for sale by Roy. He narrowly escaped gaol, as a first offender.

“This was in 1938. At the beginning of the following year William died and, incidentally, the last time I saw Claire Lavant was at his funeral. Her behaviour on that occasion was in the best theatrical tradition. She played the part of the bereaved widow to perfection. Actually, her husband's death can't have affected her greatly, for she carried on much as usual. But, on the outbreak of war, she closed the London establishment, and went to live in a house called The Brake, in Fembrake Forest. I believe the place was put at her disposal by a friend of hers in some way connected with the stage. She sent me a curt notification of her change of address, but I have never been to The Brake to see her. Nor has she invited me to do so.

“Roy Rayner did not accompany her. What became of him immediately after the incident I have mentioned I don't know. He was not in evidence at his grandfather's funeral. But it seems that either before or after war broke out he drifted into the Army. I imagine that by that time all communication between him and Claire Lavant had been completely severed. And she only saw him once again.

“There is no doubt that there was a criminal taint in Roy's blood, possibly inherited from his father. At all events, his next and final adventure reads like a scene from a picaresque novel. After his demobilisation he joined, or for all I know organised, a gang of smugglers. There was a rather amateur attempt to land a cargo from a fishing-boat somewhere on the south coast. The police got wind of the affair beforehand, and boarded the boat as soon as she dropped anchor one dark night. I dare say you may have seen the sensational story that appeared in some of the papers. There was a wild sort of struggle; the smugglers were armed, and one of the police was seriously wounded. In the confusion the smugglers jumped overboard, and it was thought they had got away.

“But next morning a body was found in the water, considerably battered. I imagine the police had used their truncheons to some effect. From the information they had been given, they had reason to suspect the identity of the dead man. They brought Claire Lavant to the spot, very much against her will, one supposes. A glance was sufficient to enable her to identify the body as that of her step-grandson.”

Merrion nodded. “Yes, I remember reading that story at the time. Mrs. Lavant is still alive, I gather? '

“Very much alive,” Dorset replied with a faint grimace. “I'll tell you about that in a minute. But first I must hark back to something else. I said just now that William Lavant had an income of his own. This he inherited from his father, old Oliver, the provisions of whose will I'll explain as clearly as I can.

“I'm no lawyer, and I can't hope to set out the proper terms. What it amounts to is this. Old Oliver left all his estate in trust. The income from this trust was to be divided equally between his two sons. On the death of either of them, his share passed to his wife if she outlived him. On the death of both parents, the share passed to the children, if any, and so on. If the succession in either branch of the family failed, that share would pass to the other branch. The trust was to be wound up, and the capital distributed, on the death of the last of old Oliver's great-grandchildren. Have I made the position sufficiently clear?”

“I think so,” said Merrion, as he poured out a second glass of sherry for his guest. “Let me see if I can work out for myself how things stand at the moment. Oliver Lavant junior's share of the income is now enjoyed by his daughter, Mrs. Dorset. It will pass from her to your daughter, Annabel, upon whose death the trust will be wound up. William Lavant's share is now enjoyed by his widow, Mrs. Lavant. Had Roy Rayner survived, this share would have passed to him on her death. But, as matters stand, the succession of that branch is at an end, and upon Mrs. Lavant's death her income will fall to Mrs. Dorset, and, after her, to Annabel. Is that right?”

“Perfectly,” Dorset replied. “And I don't mind confessing that Irene and I are profoundly conscious of the situation. Rightly or wrongly, we feel that we could put the money to at least as good use as Claire Lavant. She's eighty and more, and she can't live for ever. In fact, as recently as yesterday afternoon, Annabel had reason to believe that she was dead. And now at last I've come to what I really want to talk to you about.”

Merrion glanced at the dock. “Newport will be telling us that lunch is ready, any moment now,” he said. “Finish your sherry, and you can tell me all about it while we're having our meal.”

So it was over the dining-table that Dorset repeated the story of his daughter's adventures. Merrion listened with close attention, putting in a question now and then to elucidate a point that was not quite clear. “Well, there you are,” Dorset concluded at last. “It's perfectly safe to assume that those two young people didn't invent the story. What do you make of it?”

“I hardly know,” Merrion replied thoughtfully. “There are many points about it which strike me as very queer. The accident which brought your daughter to The Brake at all, for one thing. She had never been there before?”

“Never!”Dorset exclaimed. “We knew that Claire Lavant's address was The Brake, and that it was somewhere in Fembrake Forest, which is a description covering a very considerable area, a great part of which is no longer forest. Beyond this, we had no idea where the house was, or how to get there.”

“And you didn't know in what circumstances Mrs. Lavant lived, or what sort of an establishment she kept?”

Dorset shook his head. “We knew nothing at all about her. It was a pretty safe guess that at her age she was not likely to be living alone. But we had, or have, no knowledge of the constitution of her household.”

“Chance plays strange pranks,” Merrion remarked. “As for the central episode, one is inevitably driven to the conclusion that your daughter and David Wiston were both mistaken in thinking that Mrs. Lavant was dead.”

“Of course,” Dorset replied, a trifle impatiently. “That's the only reasonable solution. But there's just the faintest shadow of doubt at the back of my mind. You see, it's not the first time that a woman's dead body had been found at The Brake.”

Merrion eyed him shrewdly. “Is that so? Would you care to tell me?”

“I'll tell you what I can,” Dorset replied. “But, to start with, you must understand that I only had the story at second or third hand. From David Wiston, who got it from his father. It happened some three years ago, not long before Roy Rayner's spectacular demise; Claire Lavant was acquiring a familiarity with dead bodies about that time.

“It seems that very shortly after she took up her residence at The Brake, she acquired a companion. I'm very vague about who this woman was. A foreigner of some kind from one of the Baltic States, driven from her home by the Russian occupation. Needless to say, I never met her. Well, one fine morning her body was found in the lake which I am told lies in front of The Brake. She had left the usual heart-broken letter behind her. She found herself unable to endure life in exile, and had decided to end it. She hoped that her action would not unduly inconvenience Mrs. Lavant.

“The dramatic value of the event must have appealed to Mrs. Lavant, and she made the most of it. She appeared at the inquest in flowing black robes, and bedewed her evidence with the most convincing tears. Her pose was that she had lost her dearest friend, and she certainly gave her a sumptuous funeral. But, according to Wiston, there was a good deal of whispering locally. From what I know of Claire Lavant, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if there was some truth in it. It was rumoured that from being a companion, the woman had become a drudge. That her mistress had heaped all the housework upon her, and grumbled at her incessantly. Led her a dog's life, in fact. And that the true reason for the suicide had been that the wretched woman simply couldn't put up with Claire Lavant's behaviour any longer. It was established that she had no friend in this country, and nowhere she could go to.”

“You don't paint a very engaging portrait of Mrs. Lavant,” Merrion remarked. “You spoke of the faintest shadow of a doubt. Do you connect this incident with the strange adventure of your daughter yesterday?”

Dorset hesitated. “It seems the most utter nonsense when one tries to put it into words. But history has a way of repeating itself. Another of Claire Lavant's associates may have found her companionship intolerable.”

Merrion smiled. “If there really was a body, we shall no doubt hear more of it. It will hardly escape the notice of Dr. Wiston, who lives nearby. Tell me more about him and his son David.”

“I've known Matthew Wiston nearly all my life,” Dorset replied. “We are much of an age, and we were at school together. We kept in close touch after that, and I was in fact best man at his wedding. At that time he was the partner of a doctor in the suburbs, and we saw a lot of one another. I married a couple of years after he did, and our respective wives became very good friends. In a sense his boy and my girl grew up together. Then, about twelve years ago, Matthew dissolved his partnership and bought a practice at Ridhurst. His wife, poor soul, was killed by enemy action in 1940. She had come up to London to see some friends, and was killed in an air-raid.

“Naturally, after he went to Ridhurst, Matthew and I didn't see one another so often. And then the war intervened. David served in the latter part of it, and then resumed his interrupted studies. When he went to St. Lucy's as a student, he often came to see us at Surbiton, and he has continued to do so ever since.”

“Being always a welcome guest?” Merrion suggested.

“Perfectly,” Dorset replied. “If only for his father's sake. But latterly Irene and I have had pretty shrewd ideas that the friendship of their childhood was developing into something stronger between him and Annabel. We shouldn't dream of standing in her way, of course. The girl is perfectly free to marry the man of her choice. But—”

Merrion nodded understandingly. “You'd like to offer her a wider choice, I dare say. David Wiston was already aware that Mrs. Lavant was your daughter's great-aunt. How much more did he know about her?”

“Quite a lot, I imagine,” Dorset replied. “He insisted to Annabel that he didn't know where The Brake was until they came by chance upon the notice-board. But he had heard about her from his father, for, as I said, it was he who told us about the suicide of the companion. And he must have heard us talking about her. We have come to regard Claire Lavant and her ways as something of a family joke. Against ourselves, that is.”

Merrion did not put the direct question. But it seemed to him pretty certain that David must know to whom Mrs. Lavant's income would revert on her death. “Look here, Dorset!” he said. “You've told me a most intriguing story. You have, in fact, excited my curiosity to the extent of inspiring me with a desire to learn more about The Brake and its surroundings. To that end, I should very much like to make the acquaintance of Dr. Wiston.”

“I'll ask him to come up to my place in Surbiton and you can meet him there,” said Dorset.

“No need to drag him away from his practice,” Merrion replied. “Sit down now and write a letter of introduction, describing me quite simply as an old friend of yours. Armed with that, I'll run down to Ridhurst and see him.”

“It's awfully good of you to take so much interest,” Dorset replied. “Better still, I'll run down with you myself.”

But Merrion shook his head. “Indulge my whims. One of them is that I like to make the first acquaintance of anybody at an interview with no one else present. You write me that letter, and I'll try to get to Ridhurst to-morrow.”

Dorset complied with this request and departed, apologising for having taken up so much of Merrion's time. It was arranged between them that so soon as Merrion found himself at leisure he should dine with the Dorsets at Surbiton.

After his guest's departure, Merrion sat down with a cigarette. He was inclined to discount a good deal of what Dorset had told him of Mrs. Lavant's character. Dorset was evidently prejudiced against his wife's aunt, on account of her obstinate longevity. He had hardly made a secret of the fact that her decease would be very welcome. As for the story he had told, it was certainly remarkable. There might be nothing in it beyond the heated imagination of two panic-stricken young people. On the other hand, there were several points in it, the significance of which seemed to have escaped Dorset himself. And Merrion could never resist the urge to crack the hard shell of circumstance in the endeavour to disclose the kernel within.

IV

ON THE following afternoon Merrion drove himself to Ridhurst. He had no difficulty in finding Dr. Wiston's house, for it stood in one of the main streets and exhibited a brass plate. He rang the bell, and when the maid appeared handed her the letter which Dorset had written. “Will you take that to Dr. Wiston, and ask if I may see him?” he said.

The maid showed him into the doctor's waiting-room, and very soon returned with the message that Dr. Wiston would be delighted to see him. She led him to the study, where Matthew Wiston was seated very much as he had been when so rudely disturbed by David and Annabel two days earlier. He rose as his visitor came in, and advanced with outstretched hand. “I am more than pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Merrion,” he said heartily. “You are hardly a stranger to me, for Henry Dorset has spoken to me of you more than once. Sit down and tell me to what I owe the pleasure. This is not a professional visit, I take it?”

Merrion laughed. “It is a visit of pure and undisguised curiosity, I'm afraid. Dorset lunched with me yesterday and told me the oddest story of an adventure which befell his daughter and your son in this neighbourhood. I hope you won't think it a piece of confounded impertinence on my part part if I ask you for your version of what happened?”

“Not at all,” Wiston replied readily. “I know that Henry has a very special interest in Mrs. Lavant's welfare. I'll willingly tell you what I saw at The Brake the day before yesterday. And, as it happens, I am able to confirm it.”

He stretched out his arm towards a newspaper rack, and drew from it a paper which he laid open for Merrion's inspection. It was a copy of the Pembroke Forest Standard and Ridhurst Post, bearing the date of the previous day. In it was a photograph of Mrs. Lavant, seated in her hammock, with a winning smile and a graceful gesture. Accompanying this was an account of her theatrical career, as related by herself.

“They're doing a series of personalities living in the district,” Wiston explained. “One every week. Needless to say, I had not the slightest idea that they had chosen Mrs. Lavant for this week's issue. You can guess my amazement when I saw her sitting there posturing. She really is the most astounding old woman.”

“You are acquainted with her, I believe?” Merrion suggested.

“Acquainted, no more,” Wiston replied. “Fortunately, she didn't recognise me on this occasion. I'll tell you how I came to know her. When I bought this practice some few years before the war, I found among my other patients Sir Julius Blackrock, who lives at The Retreat, in Fembrake Forest. Sir Julius is an old man, not very much younger than Mrs. Lavant. He was at one time a leading theatrical manager, and I gather that he and Mrs. Lavant have known one another for half a century or more. She appeared in plays that he put on.

“Sir Julius is in many ways a queer old chap, but I have always got on very well with him. His chief eccentricity, if it can be described as such, is a passion for privacy. He lives alone at The Retreat, attended by an aged housekeeper, Mrs. Moffatt. There is also a gardener, nearly stone deaf, who is in some way related to Mrs. Moffatt. Both of them, I understand, were in some way connected with the stage. It will give you some idea of the rigidity with which privacy is guarded when I tell you that the entrance gate of The Retreat is normally kept locked. It is only unlocked for a couple of hours every morning to admit the postman and the various tradesmen, who have to call during that period or not at all.

“I call on Sir Julius periodically. There is nothing very seriously the matter with him, but he likes to consult me upon his minor ailments. More than that, his sight is failing, and he can't read for very long at a time. He likes someone to talk to now and then, but only in small and infrequent doses. I am careful not to intrude too often, or to stay too long. The procedure is strictly laid down. The Retreat is not on the telephone. I write a note to Sir Julius, telling him that I propose to visit him on a given afternoon at a given time. When I get there in my car I find the gate unlocked to admit me, and the gardener standing by. When I come out again, the gardener is still there, waiting to lock it behind me.”

“When you first knew Sir Julius, Mrs. Lavant was not living at The Brake?” Merrion suggested.

“No, the house was empty,” Wiston replied. “Some years ago, twenty-five or thereabouts. Sir Julius bought the property on which the two houses. The Retreat and The Brake, stand. It is a fairly extensive strip of land lying between two lakes, East and West Moon. The Retreat looks out upon West Moon, and The Brake upon East Moon. And the first thing Sir Julius did was to build a wall between the two houses, running the whole length of the strip of land. A high wall, topped with broken glass, to deter any one from attempting to climb it. He told me long ago, with some pride, that there is only a single narrow gate in the wall, of which he jealously keeps the key.”

“Sir Julius seems to have immured himself pretty effectively,” Merrion remarked. “Does he ever use that key?”

“Presumably he does when Mrs. Lavant visits him,” Wiston replied. “I say when she visits him, for I'm fairly certain he never visits her. He doesn't care about venturing out of his own domain. The truth is that he is becoming too blind to venture far afield by himself, and he wouldn't dream of allowing any one to lead him.

“About the time that war broke out he told me that he had consented to let The Brake, to a very old friend of his, the widow of a man he had known very well in his more active days. Even so, I gathered that he would have preferred to remain without a neighbour. He said that his consent had been influenced by a fear that The Brake might be requisitioned as a hostel for evacuees, or something horrible like that. It was not until some time later that I met Mrs. Lavant for the first time. I called one afternoon and Mrs. Moffatt showed me as usual into the room Sir Julius calls his library. There sitting with him was an obviously old woman, though her face was miraculously camouflaged. She was dressed like a girl in her teens, and was almost smothered in gaudy jewellery.

“Sir Julius introduced us, and when she heard that I was a doctor she froze up. She said she would go and talk to Mrs. Moffatt while I interviewed my patient. She has told me quite frankly since that she doesn't like doctors, though she was prepared to make an exception in my favour so long as I refrained from offering her professional advice. Her contention is that doctors had never done her any good, and had conspicuously failed to save her husband's life. Once she got that off her chest, she has seemed to regard me without aversion.”

“You meet her fairly often, I suppose?” Merrion suggested. Wiston shook his head. “I don't suppose I've met her more than half a dozen times in all. I go to see Sir Julius once every three weeks, on the average, but I very rarely find Mrs. Lavant at The Retreat. Perhaps he warns her when I am coming, and she keeps away. I have never met her anywhere else. But when I am there he often talks about her, and that is how I know the little about her concerns that I do.”

“When you first met her, did you know that Mrs. Lavant was Mrs. Dorset's aunt?” Merrion asked.

“I guessed she might be,” Wiston replied. “I knew that Irene Dorset had an aunt whose name was Mrs. Lavant. And after my first encounter at The Retreat I wrote to Henry, asking if this was the lady in question. He wrote back that she must be, for they had heard from her that her address in future would be The Brake, Fernbrake Forest.”

Merrion nodded. “Dorset doesn't seem to have taken any steps to establish contact with his wife's aunt. Perhaps he suspected that any advances on his part would be repulsed. Do you know what sort of establishment Mrs. Lavant keeps up at The Brake? She must have a domestic staff of some kind, one supposes?”

“She has,” Wiston replied. “That's the part of those young people's story that I can't understand. They say that there was no one about but the keeper, and that they couldn't attract any one else's attention. But, according to Sir Julius, she had a couple living with her for some years. A Mr. and Mrs. Lingfield, theatrical folk, of course. At one time they appeared together as a music-hall turn, as Lance and Linette. I think I remember those names on the bills in the old days. But I can't say now what particular form of talent they displayed.”

“Do the Lingfields comprise the whole of the staff at The Brake?” Merrion asked.

“The whole of the resident staff, so far as I know,” Wiston replied. “Mrs. Lavant employs a jobbing gardener, who lives in a cottage about a mile away, and his wife does a few hours' housework at The Brake, but neither of them are there every day. Then there's that keeper who behaved so oddly the day before yesterday. I had never heard of his existence before then. I fancy he must be a comparatively recent acquisition.”

“At one time Mrs. Lavant had a companion, a foreigner, hadn't she?” Merrion asked.

Wiston smiled. “So Dorset told you that story, did he? Yes, a Madame Tallinn, or some such name. A highly-educated woman, with a perfect mastery of the English language. Or so at least Sir Julius told me. It seems that Mrs. Lavant took her to The Retreat and introduced her, and Sir Julius took a great fancy to her. She used to go and read to him fairly often. I never met her, at least until after her death, the cause of which the coroner asked me to ascertain.”

“She drowned herself in one of the lakes, didn't she?” Merrion asked.

“Yes, in East Moon,” Wiston replied. “She seems to have thrown herself into it one night, for Lingfield found her body there next morning. There's no doubt that her mind was deranged. The evidence at the inquest brought that out clearly enough.”

“Dorset's theory is that she found life with Mrs. Lavant impossible,” Merrion remarked.

“Yes, I know,” Wiston replied, a trifle impatiently. “It's true that at the time there were rumours of persecution, as there always are in such cases. But nothing of the kind was suggested at the inquest. Between ourselves, Mr. Merrion, I'm inclined to believe that Mrs. Lavant is not quite so black as Dorset is apt to paint her. She may have acted unkindly towards that unfortunate young fellow, Roy Rayner. But she seems to show every consideration for people she likes, the Lingfields, for instance. They appear to be devoted to her.”

“I gather from what you say that the Lingfields were already living at The Brake at the time of the tragedy?” Merrion remarked.

Wiston nodded. “They had been there for some time, a couple of years, perhaps. After they came, another woman, Lingfield's stepsister, or something of the kind, joined them. I've only heard her referred to as Loretta. So that there were five people living at The Brake. Mrs. Lavant, Madame Tallinn, Lingfield, his wife, and his stepsister. And by all accounts until shortly before the tragedy, they were a perfectly happy family.”

“Do I infer that shortly before the tragedy there was some disagreement?” Merrion asked.

“Well, yes,” Wiston replied. “That came out at the inquest, in the evidence as to the state of mind of the deceased. It seems that for no reason whatever, she had taken to being very rude to Loretta, to such an extent that she, Loretta, had left The Brake to take up a theatrical engagement somewhere, in Australia, I believe. That rather suggests that Mrs. Lavant must have taken Madame Tallinn's part. The fact that the pair of them were very fond of one another does not depend upon Mrs. Lavant's evidence alone. Both the Lingfields testified to it.

“That was by no means the only evidence that Madame Tallinn's mind had become deranged. The witnesses described how she had taken to wandering up and down by the brink of East Moon, wringing her hands and muttering to herself. And when her room was entered after her death, it was found that she had destroyed what little she possessed. All that remained was a letter declaring her intention of committing suicide.”

“Yes, Dorset told me of that,” said Merrion. “How did Mrs. Lavant react to the tragedy?”

Wiston pointed to the newspaper still lying open on his desk. “Mrs. Lavant has a taste for publicity, as you observe. She organised a wonderful funeral procession from The Brake to the church, in which she herself played the principal part. But, when that display was over, her reaction seems to have been one of genuine grief. Sir Julius told me that she didn't go to see him for at least a fortnight, and that when she did she appeared considerably subdued.”

“You have seen Mrs. Lavant yourself since then, I take it?” Merrion suggested.

“Three or four times, I dare say,” Wiston replied. “The last time I saw her, if we except that unfortunate contretemps the day before yesterday, was a couple of months ago. She was at The Retreat when I called to see Sir Julius, and was her usual spectacular and vivacious self. She really is a marvellous old lady, there's no getting away from that. The malicious might say that her physical fitness is due to the fact that she has kept herself out of the hands of the medical profession. It sometimes seems to me that she has discovered the trick of growing younger instead of older. Henry Dorset will have to curb his impatience as best he can, for I see no reason why she shouldn't live to be a hundred.”

“Bar accidents, of course,” said Merrion lightly. “Look here. Doctor. This is a perfectly ridiculous question, as I am well aware. There was never the faintest suspicion of foul play in the case of Madame Tallinn?”

“Foul play!” Wiston exclaimed. “You mean that someone might have pushed her into the lake? There was certainly never the slightest suspicion of that. The evidence was perfectly straight-forward, and was confirmed by the letter she left. Besides, there was a complete lack of motive. What earthly reason could any one have had for murdering a penniless, homeless, and slightly demented refugee? You may say if you like that Loretta had a grievance against her. But Loretta had left The Brake some days before it happened. No, it was a case of suicide, you may set your mind at rest about that.”

Merrion laughed. “I will. You must forgive my suspicious nature. But I must ask you to bear with it for a few minutes longer. You're perfectly satisfied that nobody died at The Brake the day before yesterday?”

“I am,” Wiston replied firmly. “And I'll tell you why. But I insist upon you having tea with me. I'll ring the bell, and they'll bring it in here. We can go on talking while we refresh ourselves.”

After the maid had brought in the tea-tray, Wiston went on: “I quite appreciate your last question, Mr. Merrion. The possibility of such a thing presented itself to me. Only because I imagined that my lad had learnt his job sufficiently to be able to recognise a dead woman when he saw one. So I have been making discreet inquiries.

“To begin with, no death at The Brake has been reported. And, when you come to think about it, if there had been a stray body on the premises, even Mrs. Lavant could hardly have behaved as I with my own eyes saw her behaving half an hour later.”

“Half an hour?” Merrion interposed. “Were you on the scene as soon as that?”

Wiston stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Half an hour is perhaps an under-estimate. Let's work it out. From the lawn to the place on the roadside where David left his car must be all of a mile. Give them a quarter of an hour to walk that distance. Eight minutes for them to reach here. Ten minutes for them to tell me what was wrong, and for me to get my car out. Finally, ten minutes for us to reach the house.”

“Forty-three minutes,” Merrion remarked. “Say three-quarters of an hour. Sorry I'm so meticulous.”

“I don't mind in the least,” Wiston replied. “Accuracy is always a virtue. But the point is that there never was a body, for all those to whom it might have belonged are accounted for. I mentioned the jobbing gardener, and his wife who goes to The Brake as a charwoman. Their name is Edgefield, and they are on my panel. Joe Edgefield, the gardener, attended my surgery yesterday evening. He'd got a thorn into his hand, and it was beginning to fester.

“While I was dealing with his trouble, I took the opportunity of chatting to him about The Brake. I needn't trouble you with all he said, for most of it was quite irrelevant. But the salient points are these. The day before yesterday was Wednesday. That morning, both Joe Edgefield and his wife were working at The Brake. The only occupants of the house then were Mrs. Lavant and the two Lingfields. Joe went to work again there yesterday morning. While he was in the kitchen garden, Mr. and Mrs. Lingfield came and had a few words with him.

“You see what that means. Since David's unpardonable mistake, the only three people at The Brake have been seen alive. I myself saw Mrs. Lavant, making a spectacle of herself for the benefit of the local paper. Edgefield saw Mrs. Lingfield and her husband. And I utterly refuse to believe in the apparition of some casual visitor, lying dead in the hammock, arrayed and bejewelled in exact imitation of Mrs. Lavant.”

“That sounds convincing enough,” Merrion agreed. “Your son and Miss Dorset must have been mistaken?”

Wiston nodded. “There's no other explanation. I offer no excuses for David, who, as I say, ought to have known better. But there's just this in extenuation. Both he and Annabel were in a disturbed state. They were conscious of intrusion, and had just come from a most unpleasant altercation with the keeper. Add to that the fact that, oddly enough, the place seemed to be completely deserted, increasing the sinister aspect of the situation. According to Annabel, she kicked up enough din to rouse the Seven Sleepers. When you take all that into consideration, it becomes less difficult to understand how they came to jump to a false conclusion.”

“It's rather odd that the telephone should have been out of order on that particular afternoon,” Merrion remarked.

“Telephones have a way of going out of order, and always at the most inconvenient moments,” Wiston replied. “Until Annabel told me of her attempt to get through to me, I didn't know that The Brake was on the telephone. As I've told you, The Retreat isn't.” He reached for the directory and consulted it. “Mrs. Lavant's name isn't here,” he went on. “Perhaps she's one of those people who like to keep their numbers to themselves. It's curious, though, for as a rule she likes to display her name as prominently as possible.”

Not long afterwards, Merrion took his leave and drove back to London. Some days before, he had invited a very old friend of his, Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard, to dine with him that evening. During the meal, he entertained his guest with an account of the odd adventure at The Brake on the previous Wednesday. “This Mrs. Lavant appears to be a bit of a character,” he remarked. “And she has had some rather strange experiences. Her husband's grandson by his first wife, Roy Rayner by name, tried his hand at smuggling, and got killed in a scuffle with the police, some three years ago. Do you remember anything about that?”

Arnold frowned. “Remember it? Of course I do, and it makes me swear whenever I think about it. That affair was properly bungled. If they'd gone about things the right way, they'd have rounded up the whole gang. I had nothing to do with it, for I wasn't on the job. But it was I who got the information in the first place.”

“Let's hear the yam,” said Merrion encouragingly.

“Am I to confess to a failure on the part of the police?” Arnold growled. “Well, since it's only you, I don't mind. We'd known for some time that there was smuggling going on. And we had reason to believe in the existence of a gang of demobilised, or deserted, ex-servicemen, though we didn't know who they were. And then, almost by chance, I arrested a deserter. He put up a pretty poor show, and squealed to save his own skin. Among other things he told me was that he had been approached by a man named Rayner. This man told him that he was the leader of a gang which had got hold of a fishing-boat and meant to run a cargo to a certain spot on the south coast on a given date. Rayner had invited him to bear a hand, but for some reason or other my man declined.

“It occurred to me that Rayner was probably a professional crook, and I looked up our records to see if we had any facts about him. We had, but they didn't amount to much. A year or so before the war he had been arrested on a charge of theft. He had got off under the First Offender's Act, and for that reason we had no record of his fingerprints.

“That's all I know at first-hand. As I say, I wasn't put on the job, which was given to an inexperienced officer because he had served in the Navy and might be expected to know how to handle a nautical job. But he made a mess of it. He and his whole party boarded the boat as soon as it came in, without leaving any one on shore to stop the bolt-holes. It was as dark as pitch, and they had a proper battle by the light of their torches. One man, obviously the ring-leader, had a revolver, and didn't hesitate to use it. He got knocked on the head for his pains, and fell, or jumped overboard. The rest of them followed his example. You'd hardly believe it, but they got into the dinghy the police had come aboard from, and got clean away, leaving the police marooned upon the fishing-boat.

“Remember, it was pitch dark, and they were hampered by the fact that the only one among them who had any knowledge of nautical matters was badly wounded, with a bullet through his chest. It took them some time to lower the fishing-boat's dinghy and set out in pursuit. By that time, of course, it was far too late. They found their own dinghy abandoned on the shore, but the members of the gang had got clear away. It wasn't until daylight came that they found the body of one of them washed up on the beach.

“There was never any doubt who the dead man was, though there was nothing in his pockets to identify him. But he had a revolver hung round his neck by a lanyard. Only one of the gang, the ring-leader, had been seen to use firearms. My man had told me that the leader was Rayner, but for a definite identification a more reliable witness was necessary. Our records showed that at the time when Rayner was convicted of theft he had been living with his grandparents at a London address. Their name, Lavant, came back to me just now when you mentioned it.

“Our inquiries revealed that though Mr. Lavant was dead, Mrs. Lavant was alive; and in the country. We dug her out, but of course we were anxious not to give the old lady too violent a shock. We told her that her grandson had met with a serious accident, and offered to take her to see him. She wasn't very keen, and said that she had long ago severed all connection with her husband's grandson. She was at pains to make it clear that Rayner was no blood relation of hers. However, we persuaded her to view the body, which she identified as that of Roy Rayner, aged twenty-seven, and, so far as she was aware, single. I dare say she wasn't over-grieved to know that the young scamp was dead.”

“There are others who can't have been over-grieved, either,” Merrion remarked. “But that wouldn't interest you. Tell me about the crimes you've been investigating since I saw you last.”

V

IT WOULD be no exaggeration to say that Annabel's adventure preyed upon her mind. In the first place, she was profoundly irritated by David's behaviour. He must surely have deliberately led her to The Brake, for some obscure purpose of his own. And having got her there, the part he had played had been contemptible. He had come off very badly in his encounter with that curiously enigmatic keeper. Then, to crown everything, he had declared Mrs. Lavant was dead, a piece of folly on his part which had led to that ridiculous fiasco.

But there was more to it than mere annoyance with David. Her unexpected visit to The Brake had filled Annabel with an insatiable curiosity. Hitherto, her only knowledge of her great-aunt had been derived from hearing her parents talk about her. Her mother, good-natured and tolerant, never introduced the subject. But her father, especially when anything had happened to annoy him, was always bringing it up. Mrs. Lavant seemed almost to be an obsession with him, and the picture his imagination drew of her was not favourable. A cross-grained, selfish old woman, who spent her not inconsiderable income entirely on herself, without giving a thought to her relations. She must be well over eighty, probably bed-ridden, certainly decrepit, physically and mentally.

Now, Annabel had seen for herself. Far from being decrepit, Mrs. Lavant had exhibited a vigorous vitality. And what about the charge of selfishness and neglect of her relations? That cut both ways, for Annabel's parents had made no advances. Never even inquired after the old lady's health or comfort. Mrs. Lavant might retort with justice that it was she who had been neglected. As for the old stories of her unkind treatment of others, Annabel had only heard one side. There might be quite a lot to be said on Mrs. Lavant's behalf.

Annabel fully realised that after all these years, it would be hopeless to expect her parents to take any steps. But she had the imagination, and perhaps the impetuousness of youth. Gradually an idea took shape in her mind. Why shouldn't she, of a younger generation, attempt a rapprochement? Descend out of the blue upon Mrs. Lavant, and present herself to her as her great-niece? True, she had already been shooed away with the intimation that Mrs. Lavant saw nobody except by appointment. But that had only been because Mrs. Lavant had supposed the intruders on her lawn to be strangers. She would surely consent to receive her great-niece, if only out of curiosity.

By Friday, the day of Merrion's call on Matthew Wiston, Annabel's mind was made up. She announced casually at lunch that she proposed to spend the afternoon with a friend of hers, a statement which she hoped would turn out to be true. She went by train to Ridhurst, and set out from the station there on foot, being careful to avoid the street in which Dr. Wiston's house stood. She was a swift walker, and as she traversed the country road towards The Brake, she allowed herself to indulge in rosy anticipations. Her great-aunt would be surprised, but her astonishment would turn to affection. She would grasp the olive-branch held out to her in her old age, and all misunderstandings would be forgotten. Annabel would return home with at least a cordial message of good wishes for her parents.

Another thought passed through her mind. Cerberus, guarding the gate. Would he appear and forbid her entrance? She rather hoped he would, for she felt perfectly competent to deal with him. It had only been David's silly blustering that had made him so offensive. She felt sure that he wasn't really so rough as he had pretended to be. It was his job to keep trespassers away, and in the exercise of his duties a certain amount of rudeness and bluff was justifiable. He would turn out to be civil enough when she told him who she was.

She reached the entrance to The Brake, and it seemed to her that no one was about. But, as she laid her hand on the gate, the door of the lodge swung open, and the keeper appeared, dressed as she had seen him on the previous occasion. He strode on to the drive, and stood before her, frowning menacingly. “I've seen you before,” he growled. “You were hanging around here the other day, with a young chap. Lucky for you both I was called away when I was. Now, what is it?”

Annabel smiled at him disarmingly. “I don't want to trespass,” she replied. “I'm on my way to call on Mrs. Lavant. She's my great-aunt, you see.”

The keeper's air of ferocity changed to one of complete bewilderment. He stood motionless, staring at Annabel as though she was a visitor from another world. And when at last he spoke, his voice had lost all its roughness. “It may be as you say, miss. Did you see Mrs. Lavant when you were here the day before yesterday?”

Annabel did not feel inclined to enter upon the details of her previous visit. “Oh, yes, I saw her,” she replied. “But I couldn't speak to her then, for she was busy giving an interview to some reporters.”

This answer seemed to satisfy the keeper, for he stood aside, and his features relaxed into a positively friendly grin. “Very well, miss,” he said. “If you'd told me who you were the other day, I shouldn't have spoken as I did. You won't say anything to Mrs. Lavant when you see her? You're sure to find her at home.”

“Oh, no, I won't say anything,” Annabel replied brightly. She went on her way, triumphant in the thought that she had completely tamed the man. He was quite nice, really, and an interesting if rather puzzling character. She wondered what his origins had been. It was quite obvious that his roughness of speech and manner were assumed. His natural voice was deep and cultured, and there was something engaging in the way he had asked her not to report his previous insolence. And he was certainly good-looking, when he wasn't pretending to be so fierce. By the time she came within sight of the house, Annabel had reached the conclusion that she quite liked him.

There was nobody in sight, but this time she did not propose to indulge in any game of hide and seek. She had come to pay a formal call, and the regular procedure must be observed. She rang the front-door bell, and stood there waiting. Some time elapsed before it was answered, and in the silence Annabel's confidence began to fail her. Suppose she received a resounding snub? Suppose her great-aunt told her that she wished to have nothing to do with her or her parents? She had no wish to expose herself to anything like that. Wouldn't it be better to turn back by the way she had come?

She was still standing irresolute when the door opened, to reveal a man whom she recognised instantly. The scene on the lawn recurred to her vividly. This was the man who had been standing apart, watching the proceedings with a cynical air. Annabel wondered who he might be. Certainly not the butler, for he was not dressed in the least like a servant. He was middle-aged, tall and of spare and athletic build. Clearly he did not recognise the visitor, but eyed her with a puzzled and, Annabel fancied, a rather worried expression. “Er—good afternoon,” he said vaguely.

' Good afternoon,” she replied. An awkward pause followed, while she tried to frame a suitable form of words. She mustn't appear to treat him as a servant. “I've come to call on Mrs. Lavant. Perhaps you can tell me if she is at home?”

“Mrs. Lavant is at home,” the man said slowly. “But it is not her habit to see strangers, except by previous appointment.”

Annabel was getting rather tired of this formula. “But I'm not a stranger,” she replied briskly. “I was. passing this way, and I thought it only right to call. My name is Annabel Dorset, and my mother is Mrs. Lavant's niece.”

The man appeared utterly astounded. He stared at Annabel with eyes so wide open that she was irresistibly reminded of the Frog Footman. And so of the Duchess, probably no more formidable than her great-aunt might prove to be. But she couldn't push past him as Alice had. And at last his expression relaxed. “Forgive me, Miss Dorset,” he said. “It is so long since we have heard anything of your parents that you took me completely by surprise. Let me in turn introduce myself. My name is Lance Lingfield, and my wife and I have lived with Mrs. Lavant for many years. Do come in. I'm quite sure that Mrs. Lavant will be delighted to see you. Dear me, what a pleasant surprise for her!”

He led Annabel through the hall which she remembered so well, into the drawing-room which opened off it. “Do you mind waiting here for a minute or two?” he went on. “Mrs. Lavant is upstairs with my wife. I will tell her you are here.”

He went away, leaving Annabel sitting by the open window. Through it she could see the hammock standing on the lawn, but now unoccupied. The room was richly furnished, though in rather blatant style. All the tables were covered with large photographs in silver frames. Most of these depicted Claire Gabriel in various roles. The rest were of men and women in costume, signed with names now nearly forgotten.

Annabel had not long to wait before two women entered the room. The first was Mrs. Lavant herself, a trifle bent, but walking with surprising agility for her age. She was not quite so elaborately dressed as when Annabel had last seen her, wearing a gaily-coloured frock and not quite so much jewellery. Her cunning make-up could not entirely conceal the wrinkles, but her hair was a profusion of platinum blonde. Annabel strongly suspected that it must be a wig.

The second woman was less spectacular in appearance. She was middle-aged, tall, slim, and handsome, plainly dressed without any adornment. Her expression was submissive, and she watched Mrs. Lavant as though ready at any moment to take her cue from her. Just how the companion of a domineering woman might be expected to look, Annabel thought. This of course must be Mrs. Lingfield.

As Annabel rose, Mrs. Lavant came towards her with outstretched arms. “So you are Annabel!” she exclaimed in her rich contralto voice. “How nice to meet you at last! Sit down, dear, and tell me all about yourself and your mother.”

Mrs. Lingfield had remained in the background. “Shall I leave you alone for a little?” she asked.

“Yes, do, dear,” Mrs. Lavant replied curtly. She said no more till Mrs. Lingfield had left the room, then continued in a far less effusive tone. “What does this mean? Who sent you here to see me?”

Annabel felt as though a pail of cold water had been flung over her. “Nobody sent me,” she replied. “I came to pay my respects to you, because it seemed absurd that I should never have met my mother's aunt.”

“Nonsense!”Mrs. Lavant exclaimed sharply. “You may as well tell me the truth. Your parents sent you here out of curiosity.”

“I assure you that they didn't,” Annabel replied. “It was entirely my own idea. I didn't even tell them I was coming.”

Mrs. Lavant seemed slightly mollified. “Well, I'll believe you,” she said grudgingly. “I'm glad in a way that you came, for I don't want to lose touch entirely with the other branch of the Lavant family. Your mother and father are quite well?”

“Quite well, thank you,” Annabel replied. “They often speak of you.”

“I dare say they do,” Mrs. Lavant said grimly. “You may tell them that you have seen me in the best of health and looking forward to many years of life yet. I'm afraid the news won't be very welcome. And you may tell them that I wouldn't for the world put either of them to the trouble of coming to see me. I have my own friends, and I find their attentions quite sufficient. I shall be glad to see you from time to time, and you can give me news of them. But don't burst in upon me like this, write and tell me when you are coming. Now you shall stop and have tea with me. Will you press that bell by the fireplace?”

Annabel got up and pressed the bell-push. In a very short while the Lingfields appeared, bringing in the tea between them. Mrs. Lavant presided over the meal, talking volubly. But she seemed to have forgotten all about the Dorset family, and made no further inquiries concerning them. The conversation was virtually a monologue, Mrs. Lavant's reminiscences of her successes on the stage, interspersed with admiring comments from her listeners. “Dear Julius always tells me I ought to write a book,” she babbled. “He says my memory is so wonderful. Well, perhaps I shall, some day. And then, Annabel dear, I'll send you an autographed copy for your very own.”

Annabel took her leave as soon as she felt she decently could. Before she went, Mrs. Lavant presented her with a copy of one of the photographs taken on Wednesday for the Pembroke Forest Standard, inscribed with the flowing signature “Claire Gabriel.” “I'm sure your parents will like to have that,” Mrs. Lavant remarked maliciously.

As Annabel walked down the drive she felt a trifle disappointed. Her welcome had certainly not been so cordial as she had hoped. But she comforted herself with the thought that she had at least made a beginning. At least she hadn't been turned away, and her great-aunt had given her gracious permission to call again. Perhaps in time she would relent so far as to suggest that her mother, if not her father, should accompany her.

She had forgotten about the keeper, but it was evident that he had not forgotten about her. As she approached the gate he emerged from his lodge and came towards her, most respectfully this time. Annabel was nattered by the thought that he had been looking out for her, and welcomed him with a smile. “I beg your pardon, miss,” he said. “But did you see Mrs. Lavant?”

“Oh, yes,” Annabel replied. “I saw her and she gave me her photograph!”

“You found Mrs. Lavant quite well, miss?” the keeper asked deferentially. “You'll forgive my asking, but I haven't seen her lately. I haven't been to the house this week, and it isn't often Mrs. Lavant comes here.”

“Perfectly well,” Annabel replied. “I've just been having tea with her and Mr. and Mrs. Lingfield.”

This remark seemed to cause the keeper some astonishment. “Mr. and Mrs. Lingfield?” he repeated. “Were they both there? I thought Mrs. Lingfield had gone up to London to stay.”

Annabel shook her head. “If she did, she's come back again. Now, I've told you who I am. Will you tell me your name? It's so awkward talking to people without knowing what to call them.”

The keeper grinned. “I don't know that my name can mean anything to you, miss. But it's Tom Hopton, at your service.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hopton,” Annabel replied. “Good afternoon. I hope I shall see you again when I come here next time.”

Hopton opened the gate for her, and she started off on her walk to Ridhurst. It amused her to think that though she might not have been a striking success with her great-aunt, she had been with the keeper. The man had revealed himself in his true light, friendly and at the same time respectful. His solicitude for his employer's health showed that beneath the assumed roughness of his exterior he had a warm heart. She thoroughly approved of him.

As it turned out, the trains were inconvenient, and Annabel had to wait some little time at Ridhurst station. The result was that she got home later than she intended, and entered the house as her parents were sitting down to dinner. “Hallo, child!” Henry Dorset exclaimed. “We were beginning to wonder what had become of you. Where have you been all this time?”

“Oh, only having tea with Great-Aunt Claire,” Annabel replied with elaborate carelessness.

“What!” her father exclaimed. “You mean to tell us that you've been to The Brake again? I should have thought that your adventures there on Wednesday would have cured you of any wish to see the place again.”

“You are an extraordinary girl!” said Irene Dorset. “Why did you find it necessary to tell me you were going to spend the afternoon with a friend of yours?”

“Because I wanted to be able to tell her that neither of you knew I was coming,” Annabel replied. “And it was quite true. Great-auntie was friendly in her own way. She gave me a photograph of herself she said you'd like to have.”

“A photograph!” her father exclaimed disgustedly. “Well, sit down and let's hear all about it.”

Annabel recounted her adventures, making no mention of the keeper, who was of no importance to her present story. “I'm going to call her Auntie in future, for short,” she went on. “She was really as nice to me as I deserved. She's a thoroughly vain old woman, and utterly self-centred. There's no getting away from that. But I don't think there's any real harm in her.”

Henry Dorset grunted. “There are at least two people, now dead, who would hardly have agreed with you. Your mother and I know better than that. What about those other two folk you met there?”

“The Lingfields?” Annabel replied. “They seemed all right, though a trifle subdued. Mr. Lingfield told me that he and his wife had been living with Auntie for years. So far as I can make out, their position is something between companions and domestic helps. And Auntie mentioned someone whom she called dear Julius, whoever he may be.”

“The Lingfields have plenty to put up with, I dare say,” her father remarked. “So the old woman sent us her photograph, did she? I'm bound to say I'd rather you'd brought home an invitation to her funeral.”

After dinner Annabel produced the photograph, and they laid it beside the one they already possessed, taken many years earlier.

“She hasn't changed much in recent years,” said Irene Dorset. “She hardly looks a day older in this last photograph than she does in the other. Her face seems to have changed a little, that's all.”

Annabel laughed. “Her face is what she makes it. Having been an actress, she's up to all the dodges. She was so heavily made up this afternoon that she was practically disguised, and I'm pretty sure that her hair can't be her own. But still, if you look closely enough, you can see the wrinkles. They don't show in the photograph.”

“I can understand her making up to have a photograph taken,” said her father. “But why should she take all that trouble when she wasn't expecting anybody? Hardly for the benefit of the Lingfields, I should think.”

“Because she likes to pretend that she's still on the stage,” Annabel replied. “This afternoon I felt that I was acting in a drawing-room comedy, with Auntie as the leading lady. The setting was perfect, with all the theatrical properties. The Lingfields were the deferential attendants, and I was the long-lost grandchild. It was rather fun in a way, especially as all I had to do was to make an appropriate comment whenever Auntie paused in her soliloquy.”

“I'm glad you found it fun,” her father remarked. “Whatever possessed you to pay a formal call like that?”

Annabel shrugged her shoulders. “Curiosity, mainly. I wanted to make quite sure that I hadn't been dreaming on Wednesday. And I hadn't, for everything was just as I remembered it. As I went through the hall I saw the telephone that wouldn't work and the gong I had pounded. Even the hammock was still in the same place on the lawn.”

“With a dead woman lying in it?” her father suggested.

“Don't be so silly!” Annabel exclaimed. “Of course there wasn't. There never was a dead woman. It was David who made such fools of us. It was Auntie I saw, so fast asleep that she looked as if she was dead. Of course, being fast asleep, she looked a little different then. But there's no doubt it was her, for she was dressed exactly as she was when the photograph was taken later. And this afternoon I recognised some of the jewellery she was wearing.”

“It's a thousand pities she ever woke up,” Henry Dorset muttered. “Well, you can please yourself about going to see her again. It might be a good thing if you did, now and then, to make sure she doesn't pop off without our hearing about it.” He paused, then added darkly: “And without the trustees hearing about it either.”

VI

PERHAPS, if Merrion had been busy during the week-end, he would have devoted little further thought to The Brake and its occupants. But, having kept a business appointment on Saturday morning, he found himself free from further engagements for the next forty-eight hours. He had further business to transact in London during the following week. It was hardly worth while going back to High Eldersham, his permanent home, especially as his wife Mavis was away visiting friends. So he resolved to amuse himself as best he could.

The solution of a problem of any kind was the form of amusement which appealed to him most. It was natural, therefore, that his mind should dwell upon his conversations with Dorset and Matthew Wiston. But did The Brake present a problem? On the face of it, it did not. From all that he had been told, it seemed to be definitely established that no death could have occurred there on Wednesday. But Merrion was never content to survey merely the face of things. He felt instinctively that some mystery was involved in the story he had been told.

Of the truth of that story he had no doubt. His very slight acquaintance with Annabel Dorset was sufficient to assure him that she was not the sort of person to invent a yam like that. He was also prepared to accept, with slight reservations, the background which Dorset and Wiston had supplied. Reservations, because Dorset was obviously prejudiced against his wife's aunt, and Wiston's knowledge of events at The Brake was derived almost entirely from hearsay. But, on the whole, the sketches that had been drawn were probably correct enough, from their own points of view.

The situation was by no means unprecedented. The central figure was an old woman, whose death would be advantageous to a certain group of people. But, in this case, the Dorsets and their circle were to all intents and purposes complete strangers to Mrs. Lavant. According to Dorset, they did not correspond, nor had he or any member of his family visited The Brake until Wednesday. On the other hand, Mrs. Lavant was surrounded by her own friends, who, in the case of the Lingfields, might be assumed to be dependants as well. They could have no expectations from Mrs. Lavant, since she was not free to bequeath any part of her income to them. It was therefore in their interest that she should live as long as possible.

Much as Henry Dorset might look forward to Mrs. Lavant's death, Merrion was not inclined to suspect him of having taken any steps to hasten that event. On the other hand, there was that extraordinary illusion of Wednesday afternoon. It might be that Mrs. Lavant had fallen into so deep a sleep that she had passed into a coma resembling death. But in that case was the sleep entirely natural? Might it not have been induced by some soporific drug?

Merrion's fertile imagination began to work upon this. Was it possible that an unsuccessful attempt had been made on Mrs. Lavant's life that afternoon? That she had been given some drug, in quantity incorrectly calculated to be fatal? And that she had recovered from the effects sufficiently to play her part before the camera? This theory, if correct, would throw light upon many points which had hitherto seemed obscure.

Correct or not, it seemed to Merrion a theory well worth following to its logical conclusion. The question was, who could have made such an attempt? Not the Lingfields, for they had everything to lose by Mrs. Lavant's death. The only people who had anything to gain were the Dorsets and those closely associated with them. Though Henry Dorset had not said so in so many words, he clearly expected that his daughter would eventually marry David Wiston. If things turned out that way, since Annabel was the eventual heiress, David must be included among those to whom Mrs. Lavant's death would be an advantage. And, from his point of view, if he contemplated hastening her death, he would best escape suspicion by doing so before he married, or even proposed to, Annabel.

So much for motive. It seemed to Merrion that opportunity was even clearer. It had been David's suggestion that he and Annabel should spend the afternoon in Fembrake Forest. He had professed ignorance of where The Brake was, but even Annabel had her doubts about that. It was certainly odd that he should have led her almost straight there. Almost, but not quite, for a period had intervened during which they were separated.

How long that period had been was uncertain. According to Annabel, David had gone for a swim in West Moon, leaving her beneath the trees nearby. She had gone to sleep, and could not tell how long she had slept. It might have been half an hour at least. David had not gone for a swim. He had made his way round the head of the lake and the wall to The Brake, taking the route by which he had subsequently led Annabel. He had found Mrs. Lavant asleep in her hammock, he had administered the drug, probably hypodermically. Being on the staff of St. Lucy's, he had access to drugs and syringes. Having done this, he had returned to Annabel by the way he had come.

Merrion's critical brain proceeded to seek flaws in this. How had David foreseen his opportunity? How could he have known in advance that he would find Mrs. Lavant asleep on the lawn? The answer was that for some time past he had kept The Brake under observation, and discovered that this was her invariable habit at that particular time and season. How did he know that the Lingfields would not be present? Again by observation. He had learnt that they always took advantage of Mrs. Lavant's siesta to absent themselves from the premises.

To continue the story. David had then cajoled Annabel to the lawn. He had administered a dose which he believed would be fatal. But, in his anxiety not to overdo it, and so run the risk of post-mortem detection of the drug, he had under-estimated the dose. It would do no harm to afford Annabel a glimpse of her great-aunt asleep in the hammock. When Annabel heard later that Mrs. Lavant had died in her sleep, she would not question the fact.

There would have been nothing more for David to do after that, if their departure had not been intercepted by the keeper. In order to rescue them from the predicament, Annabel had run back to awaken her great-aunt. David's only course had been to follow her. He had not been deceived into believing that Mrs. Lavant was dead when she wasn't. But, imagining that she must certainly be dead by the time they could return with Dr. Wiston, he had said that she was already. He had therefore agreed with Annabel that the best course would be to fetch his father.

Merrion fully realised that all this guesswork was no sort of evidence against David Wiston. Further, that even had there been an attempt to murder Mrs. Lavant, it was no business of his. But Henry Dorset had come to him for advice. Was it Merrion's duty to impart to him his suspicions, in the strictest confidence? Merrion decided that it was not. At all events, not until a reconnaissance had proved, or disproved, the possibility of his theory.

His first step was a careful study of the one-inch Ordnance Survey of Fembrake Forest. On this he had no difficulty in tracing the route described by Annabel. The two Moon ponds were marked, and on the isthmus between them two houses were indicated. Both lakes were long and narrow, and they were approximately the same size, with their longer axis running north and south. To the southward of the lakes ran a lane, on which the entrances to both houses were situated. About a mile to the north of this was a second, and roughly parallel lane. From this was access to the more easterly of the two houses, which must be The Brake, though the names of the houses were not given on the map. There appeared to be no access to the more westerly house. The Retreat. A footpath was shown, running from one lane to the other, to the west of West Moon. It must have been at the southern end of this footpath that Annabel and David had left the car. Approaching from the London road, they would have reached the spot from the west. They would not, therefore, have passed the entrance to either house. A measurement of distances on the map suggested that the estimate of three-quarters of an hour as the period which had elapsed between their leaving the lawn and their return with Dr. Wiston, should be about right.

What had happened at The Brake during that period? The return to consciousness of Mrs. Lavant. If she had been doped, she must have felt a bit muzzy when she woke up. But she must have been expecting the visit of the representatives of the local paper, and she had sufficient strength of will to pull herself together. The Lingfields had returned from wherever they had been. The car with the newspaper men in it had driven up to the front door.

Merrion considered when it would be best to carry out his reconnaissance in secret. It might be expected that, during a fine week-end, people would be strolling at large through the Forest. But from Monday onwards his time would be too fully occupied to allow him the opportunity. In the end he decided to visit the spot during Sunday night. The moon, being at her full, would afford him sufficient light for his purpose.

So some time before ten o'clock he took out his car and set out. He was wearing an old grey flannel suit, and was equipped with a powerful torch and a short tyre lever—this last a very useful tool should he find it necessary to force open anything. He followed the main road southward, turning off towards the outskirts of the Forest. Once he had left the main highway, he had the lanes to himself. His map had shown him a sandpit within a mile of his destination. He found this without difficulty, and drove the car into it, leaving it where it was hidden from the road. Then he started on foot for the southern end of the footpath to the westward of West Moon.

The moon was shining brightly, and the night was very still and sultry, presaging thunder. As he walked swiftly and noiselessly in his rubber-soled shoes, the sound of a distant bell striking eleven o'clock came to his ears. He was not likely to meet any one in this sparsely-populated district at such a time of night. The only person for whom he need be on the alert was that confounded keeper, who might be given to nocturnal prowling in search of poachers.

He reached the stile at the southern end of the footpath without meeting anybody. Climbing this, he started along the path. Litter was more than ever in evidence, showing this to be a favourite week-end resort. But as the path narrowed and became more difficult to follow, the litter was left behind. It became obvious that after a couple of hundred yards or so the path had fallen into disuse.

Merrion was not greatly concerned to follow the path. His first object was to find some point of vantage from which he could gain a view to the eastward. Some little distance ahead of him the ground rose in a slight fold, and towards this he pushed his way. He reached the shoulder of the slight ridge and forced his way upward through the tangled brushwood. Then he turned towards the lake, and in a few yards reached the edge of a miniature cliff, falling steeply to the surface of West Moon, a few feet beneath him.

He could not have fou