The room on the other side of the front door proved to be a bedroom, apparently furnished no less expensively, although the nearly drawn curtains limited the view from the window to about a third of its area. The bed covers, Hillyard noticed, lay as they had been turned back, although a suit of pyjamas had been folded and placed on a nearby chair.
Observing, as he passed, that both front and back doors were secured not by country latches but with Yale locks, Hillyard walked silently round the cottage. On all sides, decaying vegetation straggled almost to the wall. There was the smell of perpetually wet stone, of leaves and fungus.
The two windows at the back both gave into the same room, a fairly narrow one that extended the breadth of the cottage. It contained modern kitchen fittings, except that the sink had no taps. At one end was a small dining table and chairs. Beside the gas stove stood a large cylinder. There were a few dishes on the table, and also a jug and a packet of cornflakes.
Hillyard gave the back door a perfunctory shake. It was locked. He returned to the van.
“That’s it, all right,” he said to Bradlaw, who had got back into the driving seat and was rubbing the chill out of his plump knees. “And very nicely set up. Damn me! Very nicely. Aye!” He gave the cottage a baleful look as Bradlaw started the engine and the van jerked away.
“How do you know?” asked Bradlaw, switching on the side lamps and leaning nearer the windscreen. This was the worst time for driving, neither light nor dark. “How do you know it’s the one?”
Hillyard lit a cigarette and ignored the question. He was thinking. Suddenly he nudged his companion’s arm. “Quick, into there.” He pointed to a clearing by the road’s edge almost immediately ahead. Bradlaw braked and swung the van sharply round to the right. A tree loomed up. He stopped just short of it and swore.
“Fine,” said Hillyard. He turned and groped behind him in the dark interior of the van. The small leather case that he found there he thrust into his overcoat pocket. Then he opened the door.
Bradlaw seized his arm. “What are you going to do?” he asked, nervousness thinning his voice.
Hillyard looked over his shoulder as he stepped down. “Do?” he echoed. “I’m coming with you, friend. You didn’t think we could leave the van outside the gate, did you? It will be safe enough here until we want it.”
“Look here,” said Bradlaw, opening the door on his side and clambering out clumsily, “I thought that as...” He came round the front of the van, breathing quickly. “I thought there wouldn’t be anything for us to do now. With there being no one there, I mean.” He stared hopefully at the other’s slightly contemptuous smile. “Well, there isn’t, is there?” His arms flapped for a moment, then he pushed both hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. Still Hillyard said nothing. Bradlaw glanced round at the stockade of leafless trees within whose damp gloom they stood concealed from the highway.
The doctor took his arm, not ungently, and said, as if speaking to himself: “The time is past for pretence. That’s too dangerous now. We need to make the legend a reality, or God knows when we’ll sleep again.” Then he grinned in the dusk and added sharply: “And so, my tubby little meat packer, let us go to redress an ancient wrong.”
Together they regained the road and began walking back the way their van had come. The figures in the thickening dark were like those of Don Quixote and his fearful squire.
Chapter Seventeen
The landlord of the Brink of Discovery was not a local man but a former singer from the North of England who had saved the proceeds of brief but phenomenally profitable popularity and invested them in what he called ‘the mine host racket’.
“You see how it is,” he said to Purbright and his companion. “The locals haven’t enough honest thirst to keep the flippin’ beer engine from rusting. Do you know what they do? They brew some filthy liver-lifter of their own and guzzle it in bed until they’re in the mood to get up and fire a few ricks. What? You’d never believe. Honest, you wouldn’t. And they’re all related, this lot are. Here, even when they bother to get married there’s no call for half of ’em to change their names. My Freda says: ‘There’s another three village idiots going to church’ every time the wedding bells ring. They’re a bright lot round here, I’ll tell you.”
“We were hoping...” Purbright put in.
The landlord poddled him in the shoulder with one finger. “So you see,” he went on relentlessly, “there’s nothing round here to keep a pub’s brass polished. They’re not civilized. Arson and incest, them’s their hobbies, my Freda says, and that’s just about it. Well, if I had my way I wouldn’t have ’em in the place. They just sit round and keep spitting in their beer to make it last out and gouging holes in the bar floor with their ugly great boots. Look, now—look over there at that trestle—one of ’em’s been hacking at it with a bloody scythe. I tell you they bring scythes in here. They do—no, really.”
Seizing the opportunity for speech that seemed to be presented by the landlord’s brows rising so high that his eye-pouches were pulled taut like grey elastic, Purbright tried again.
“We’re...” was all he managed.
“You’re dicks—yes, I know.” The landlord beamed upon them like a school matron. “It’s those raincoats. Here, I expect you’re after one of these straw-chewing zombies for slipping a hunk of rat poison into his auntie. That’s a favourite of theirs, rat poison is. Some of ’em get used to it. No, you’d not believe that, would you? But it’s right. They eat it like bloody sandwich spread. Never mind”—he tossed his head—“we’ll not waste time talking about that lot, shall we. I was telling you how I came to make this place pay. D’you know where the real trade comes from? The real money? Do you?” He leaned nearer, filling the little service hatch with his affable moon-face. “From the city. Brum. And over from Shrewsbury, some of ’em. And Stafford an’ all. Even Liverpool in the summer. You know why, don’t you? Listen. It’s what we call a gimmick in show business. A gimmick, that’s what. Like echo chambers and crimpy hair and walloping great fat chests and that. You see, I got my old agent to come and give the place the once over when I took it on. First thing he did was change the name. The Bull, it used to be. We’ll give ’em Bull, he says. You want something classy and half-sloshed like, that’ll go down with the intelligentsia out with one another’s missuses. Mind you, it’s all above board. No Mr and Mrs Smith or any of that lark. Proper names and all different. Aye, anyway...But look here, you’re the pollis, aren’t you? You’ll be wanting to know something, I suppose. Come on, don’t be bashful. Hey, Freda! Freda, love!” He disappeared.
Purbright’s companion blew out his cheeks and softly suspired an appropriate obscenity. “Sorry about him, old chap, but he’s not one of our home-reared, believe me. My chief just asked me to help you with the geography and the language; we didn’t bargain for a blasted walking public address system.”
A door opened behind them and they were joined by the landlord, bearing a tray set with three glasses. “Here,” he said. Purbright and the other policeman each took a whisky. “Right,” said the landlord. He sat down and regarded them with the air of a grocer ready to take a list. His furious loquacity seemed to have burned itself out.