V
The burglars, halting at the edge of the woods, held a short conclave.
‘You will stay by the wicket gate and keep watch, then,’ said Felicity, ‘while I go and get it.’ She spoke in a whisper, less from fear of being overheard than because the spell of summer midnight was upon her. It was faëry time.
‘Right you are,’ said Aubrey, in the same voiceless tone. ‘Bung it over the gate when you’ve collected it, and I’ll bury it.’
Felicity squeezed his hand, and they were soon among the whispering trees. Tripping over briar stems and trailing blackberry plants, almost crashing into tree-trunks which suddenly loomed before them, losing the path and miraculously finding it again, at last they reached the wicket gate and the London-Bossbury road. Once on its level surface Felicity began to run. She ran like the wild deer, or the goddess Artemis who hunts them with her bow. Into the sandy lane she sped and over the lych-gate she scrambled. Across the silent churchyard, with its ghostly tombs, she ran, and vaulted over the wall.
Behind the Vicarage woodshed was a pump, and behind the pump a pig-sty, empty now, for the vicar was no swineherd. His was not the nature which can find pleasure in scratching a pig on the back with a ferrule of a walking-stick and pondering on the wonders of evolution. The pig-sty, then, was untenanted.
Felicity hoisted herself over the rotting wooden fence which surrounded it, and groped her way to the inner sty. She stooped low and entered the small roofed enclosure. Once inside, she produced the electric torch Aubrey had insisted upon lending her, and switched it on.
A suitcase was standing in the far corner. With a shiver of disgust, Felicity gripped its handle and carried it to the entrance. Here she switched off the torch, felt her way to the outer fence, dropped the suitcase over, climbed after it, and carried it back to the wicket gate where Aubrey was awaiting her coming.
‘Got it? Good egg!’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see to it now. Good night. Don’t make a row getting back.’
‘I think I’d better help you,’ said Felicity quietly.
‘No.’ Aubrey sounded determined. ‘Cut off, there’s a good kid. One of us is far less likely to be nabbed than two if anyone should come nosing about. I’ve only got to bung it over and cover it up, you see, and there’s only the one spade, so we couldn’t both do the job even if you did come.’
Felicity took his black head between her hands and kissed him suddenly and surprisingly on the mouth.
‘Have your own way,’ she said, half laughing. ‘And good luck. But it’s such a horrid place to be alone in, Aubrey. Are you sure you won’t be afraid?’
‘Oh, I shall be all right. I’ve got the torch, you see.’
So saying, he picked up the spade which was resting against the trunk of a tree, and, with the torch in his pocket and the suitcase in his other hand, he stepped away from her. The woodland closed around him, and Felicity was left alone. In the branches of the nearest tree a star hung like some wondrous gleaming fruit. It winked as she watched it. Straining her ears for any sound from Aubrey, she waited several minutes. The night drew near and touched her. She could sense its quiet breathing. But no uproar broke the stillness, neither sounds of pursuing footsteps, cries for succour, shrieks of fear, nor any other sounds. Trusting that all was well, Felicity went home.
VI
It was a horrid place. There could be no other opinion. Sinister, ghostly, grey, the Druids’ Stone bulked menacingly large, and the ring of whispering pines, like courtiers round a cruel, evil king, stood tall and straight and still. Aubrey breathed deeply to restore his ebbing courage, dumped down the suitcase in the hole Jim Redsey had made the night before, and resolutely picked up the spade.
Suddenly an idea occurred to him. Of what use, after all, to bury the case where the police must certainly discover it? Hauling the case up to the surface, he dumped it on one side and began to fill the hole with great spadefuls of the loose light soil. Suddenly another idea occurred to him. His brown face twisted into a wicked grin that made him brother to a faun.
‘Might as well give the inspector something to think about if he does come nosing round here,’ he said to himself. He thrust spade and case into the bushes, groped his way out of the murky woods, and returned to the house.
There was a case of stuffed trout in the hall. Aubrey, creeping in by way of the drawing-room, whose French windows had been left unfastened when he and Felicity had ventured forth in quest of the case, switched on the light, took off his jacket, folded it into a thick pad, and placed it against the glass. Then he raised his fist and dealt the folded coat a smashing blow.
Above stairs his cousin Redsey slept heavily, the prey of terrible dreams. Aubrey’s mother, that stately, uncourageous matron, also slept. Her Roman profile, dignified even in slumber, and both her shell-like ears, were buried beneath the clothes. The tinkle of broken glass as it fell to the floor of the hall passed entirely unnoticed.
Aubrey seized the largest trout with both hands. To his excited imagination it appeared to present an expression of shocked surprise at being thus rudely disturbed. Switching off the light, he thrust the fish under his arm and ran back to the woods. Here he pushed the trout into what remained of the hole, drew out the spade, and quickly shovelled back the rest of the earth and stamped it flat.
Then, with the circumspect aid of the torch, he felt for the case, intending to find some other hiding-place for it. To his consternation and dismay, it was not to be found.
Aubrey searched frantically. Throwing caution to the winds, he used the torch recklessly, careless of who might see the gleaming light. All was of no avail. The incriminating bloodstained suitcase had vanished.
VII
‘I knew I heard burglars,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay triumphantly to a nervously ill-tempered Jim Redsey and a heavy-eyed worried-looking Aubrey next morning.
‘Burglars?’ said Jim, with a short laugh. ‘What rot!’
‘I object, James, both to your speech and the abrupt, I may say discourteous, tone in which you see fit to deliver it,’ pronounced his aunt coldly. ‘I repeat, there were burglars in this house last night. They have stolen a valuable trout from the case in the hall.’
‘Valuable?’ snarled Redsey. ‘What tosh! A beastly lot of mid-Victorian atrocities, those trout! As a matter of fact, one of them isn’t a trout at all. It’s a roach.’
‘I do not affect to be a judge of fish,’ said his aunt, ‘neither am I an authority upon their names and habits. I merely remark that there were burglars in this house last night. I heard them. As proof I submit that the trout is gone. I realize that I am but a poor subnormal specimen of humanity, belonging to the weaker sex at that; one who may be contradicted, insulted and corrected at random by any young man who happens to be a poor twelve at golf and an average – a very average – performer upon the piano. Nevertheless, I have ears and eyes equal to any in this country, and I insist that this house was visited by burglars last night! I myself perceived them stealing across the lawn in the early hours of the morning! And I repeat that they removed a valuable fish from the case in the hall.’
‘Why you keep harping on the value of the putrid fish I can’t conceive,’ said Jim irritably, perceiving that his aunt was going to get the best of it as usual.
‘If it were not valuable,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay, in a tone which indicated clearly that the argument was at an end, ‘the burglars would not have taken it. If you are going to choke, Aubrey, will you please go outside!’