Pons smiled.
“I should imagine so,” he observed softly. “Did you not think it strange, Mr Mulvane, that wet prints should have been left on such a bitterly cold night when the ground was frozen.”
I looked at Pons in surprise.
“Strange, now that you mention it, Pons.”
“As you say, Parker. I commend that factor to you both. It is of the utmost significance.”
He turned to our visitor.
“Were the same marks visible in the earth on the occasion when the poacher was found dead?”
Mulvane nodded grimly.
“They were, Mr Pons. That was when the local stories gained in strength and depth. In fact, some of those newspaper reports were not exaggerated so far as feeling in the village goes latterly. And with my uncle’s death one might say there is something of a reign of terror about Chalcroft.”
“I am not surprised,” I put in.
“But even stranger things were in store,” Mulvane went on. “I was coming back from the village one evening last autumn, round about eleven o’clock, when I heard a strange whistling sound.”
It had suddenly become very quiet in the room and the creaking noise made by Solar Pons’ chair when he moved in its depths, almost startled me.
“Whistling, Mr Mulvane?”
My companion’s brilliant eyes were fixed intently upon our visitor’s face.
“Someone was whistling in the darkness near the high wall that runs around the Hardcastle family graveyard adjoining the grounds of the Manor. It was a most sinister thing to hear in the darkness at that time of night.”
“What sort of whistling, Mr Mulvane?”
“Slow, graceful and stately, Mr Pons. Extremely sinister. I have heard it again since then, and it has always impressed me powerfully.”
“Hmm.”
Solar Pons put the tips of his thin fingers together, his brow furrowed with concentration.
“You could not see the person who was doing the whistling?”
Mulvane shook his head.
“It was too dark and whoever it was was on the other side of the wall. It was my impression that the person responsible for that melancholy tune was actually within the graveyard.”
“Good heavens, Mr Mulvane!” I could not forbear exclaiming.
“You may well say so, Dr Parker,” Mulvane went on. “I let myself in at the side-gate of the Manor and walked back toward the sound, keeping on the grass and in the shadow of shrubbery. I stopped, however, because I became aware of furtive footsteps in the gravel of the driveway that appeared to be keeping pace with me. It was dark, as I have said, with an occasional moon and I stopped behind the bushes and kept watch. The whistling went on and a few seconds later I saw a tall figure pass my hiding place. Mr Pons, it was my uncle!”
Solar Pons slapped his thigh with a sudden cracking noise that sounded like an explosion in the quiet sitting-room.
“Singular, Parker. Here we have a reclusive man who is frightened for his life, if we are to believe Mr Mulvane and the press reports; who has been threatened by an Indian secret society; and yet who wanders about his estate alone in the dark, late at night. What do you make of it, my dear fellow?”
I looked at him helplessly, conscious of Mulvane’s inquiring eyes.
“None of it makes sense, Pons.”
“Exactly, Parker. Which is why there must be a pattern somewhere. In what direction was your uncle going, Mr Mulvane?”
“Toward the graveyard, Mr Pons. Toward the source of that unearthly whistling.”
“You did not follow?”
The school-teacher shook his head.
“I am afraid I lost my nerve, Mr Pons. I went back to the house as quietly and speedily as possible.”
“You were extremely wise, Mr Mulvane. You kept watch on your uncle, of course.”
Mulvane’s eyes held a deep look of approval.
“Indeed, Mr Pons. On three more occasions I observed him going out toward the old graveyard at night, though I cannot now remember whether there was whistling on those occasions. There certainly was on one.”
Pons pulled nervously at the lobe of his right ear.
“It seems as though the whistling were a signal and that to Hardcastle it indicated an assignation. There was evidently no harm at that stage in the meetings as your uncle returned safely on each occasion.”
He looked sharply at our visitor.
“Before you go any further, Mr Mulvane, I should like to hear that tune, if you can remember it reasonably accurately.” Surprise showed on the teacher’s face.
“Certainly, Mr Pons, if I can manage it. Though I am no musician. I did, in fact, ask the College music master, Tidmarsh, about it. He failed to recognise it, though I am sure I gave a fair impression of it.”
“Let us just hear it, if you please.”
Pons sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, an expression of intense concentration on his lean, aquiline face. I listened intently as Mulvane pursed his lips and gave vent to a high, keening whistle. The tune was slow, melancholy, yet recognisably had something of the dance swirling somewhere within it. Despite our familiar, comfortable sitting-room with its cosy lamp-light and the warm fire I felt a stirring of the thrill that our visitor must have experienced as he heard it in the darkness of the night near a graveyard wall.
Mulvane came to the end of the phrase and started on another. Despite his disclaimer he was doing well though I had, of course, no knowledge of how accurate his rendition had been. The last plaintive notes died away and to my surprise I saw the rapt, intent expression on Pons’ face change to a smile. He abruptly opened his eyes.
“Splendid, Mr Mulvane! You have excelled yourself.”
“Have I been of some help, Mr Pons?”
Pons rubbed his fingers briskly together.
“Of the greatest help, Mr Mulvane. This business begins to assume a recognisable pattern.”
He smiled at me disarmingly.
“It is an old Irish folk-tune, Parker, little remembered today. It is called, if I remember it accurately, The Devil’s Waltz.”
Five: THE CEMETERY AT NIGHT
There was a long silence, broken only by my getting up to reach for the steel poker and to prod the fire into a brighter blaze. I put on more coal from the scuttle and went back to my armchair. The cosy sitting-room of 7B seemed to crouch beneath a more palpable cloud than hovered within it from Pons’ pipe and our visitor’s strong cheroot. There were furrows of concentration on the latter’s face as he turned again to my companion.
“Remarkable that you should know the tune, Mr Pons. But what does it all mean?”
Solar Pons reached out for the small metal instrument he used to clean the bowl of his pips and frowned.
“That is a major question, Mr Mulvane, and one impossible to answer at this stage. We have several strands here and it will be possible only to unravel them on arrival in Buckinghamshire. I take it you have told me everything of relevance up to the incidents immediately preceding your uncle’s death?”
“That is so, Mr Pons,” said the teacher quietly. “I think I have kept everything in sequence, just as I remember it.”
“Yet there is something further, if I am not mistaken. On your card you said ‘For God’s sake help me in this terrible affair’. I presume from that that something even more horrifying happened round about the time of Mr Hardcastle’s death to warrant you committing such a phrase to paper.”
“You are correct, Mr Pons. I do not recall having been so frightened in my life.”
He looked apologetically at his questioner.
“I am an academic, Mr Pons, it is true and one who is shy and retiring, but I can assert myself when required and in earlier years broke many a nose upon the rugby field.”
He again looked apologetically at Pons.