Tragedy at Ravensthorpe
J. J. Connington
Chapter One. THE FAIRY HOUSES
“GOT fixed up in your new house yet, Sir Clinton?” asked Cecil Chacewater, as they sauntered together up one of the paths in the Ravensthorpe grounds. “It must be a bit of a change from South Africa—settling down in this backwater.”
Sir Clinton Driffield, the new Chief Constable of the county, nodded affirmatively in reply to the question.
“One manages to be fairly comfortable; and it’s certainly been less trouble to fit up than it would have been if I’d taken a bigger place. Not that I don’t envy you people at Ravensthorpe,” he added, glancing round at the long front of the house behind him. “You’ve plenty of elbow-room in that castle of yours.”
Cecil made no reply; and they paced on for a minute or more before Sir Clinton again spoke.
“It’s a curious thing, Cecil, that although I knew your father so well, I never happened to come down here to Ravensthorpe. He often asked me to stay; and I wanted to see his collection; but somehow we never seemed able to fix on a time that suited us both. It was at the house in Onslow Square that I always saw you, so this is all fresh ground to me. It’s rather like the irony of fate that my first post since I came home should be in the very district I couldn’t find time to visit when your father was alive.”
Cecil Chacewater agreed with a gesture.
“I was very glad when I saw you’d been appointed. I wondered if you’d know me again after all that time; but I thought we’d better bring ourselves to your notice in case we could be of any help here—introduce you to people, and all that sort of thing, you know.”
“I hardly recognized you when you turned up the other day,” Sir Clinton admitted frankly. “You were a kiddie when I went off to take that police post in South Africa; and somehow or other I never seem to have run across you on any of my trips home on leave. It must have been ten years since I’d seen you.”
“I don’t wonder you didn’t place me at once. Ten years makes a lot of difference at my advanced age. But you don’t look a bit changed. I recognized you straight off, as soon as I saw you.”
“What age are you now?” asked Sir Clinton.
“About twenty-three,” Cecil replied. “Maurice is twenty-five, and Joan’s just on the edge of twenty-one.”
“I suppose she must be,” Sir Clinton confirmed.
A thought seemed to cross his mind.
“By the way, this masked ball, I take it, is for Joan’s coming-of-age?”
“You got an invitation? Right! I’ve nothing to do with that part of the business.” Then, answering Sir Clinton’s inquiry: “Yes, that’s so. She wanted a spree of some sort; and she generally gets what she wants, you know. You’ll hardly know her when you see her. She’s shot up out of all recognition from the kid you knew before you went away.”
“She used to be pretty as a school-girl.”
“Oh, she hasn’t fallen off in that direction. You must come to this show of hers. She’ll be awfully pleased if you do. She looks on you as a kind of unofficial uncle, you know.”
Sir Clinton’s expression showed that he appreciated the indirect compliment.
“I’m highly flattered. She’s the only one of you who took the trouble to write to me from time to time when I was out yonder. All my Ravensthorpe news came through her.”
Cecil was rather discomfited by this reminder. He changed the subject abruptly.
“I suppose you’ll come as Sherlock Holmes? Joan’s laid down that everyone must act up to their costume, whatever it is; and Sherlock wouldn’t give you much trouble after all your detective experience. You’d only have to snoop round and pick up clues and make people uncomfortable with deductions.”
Sir Clinton seemed amused by the idea.
“A pretty programme! Something like this, I suppose?” he demanded, and gave a faintly caricatured imitation of the Holmes mannerisms.
“By Jove, you know, that’s awfully good!” Cecil commented, rather taken aback by the complete change in Sir Clinton’s voice and gait. “You ought to do it. You’d get first prize easily.”
Sir Clinton shook his head as he resumed his natural guise.
“The mask wouldn’t cover my moustache; and I draw the line at shaving that off, even in a good cause. Besides, a Chief Constable can’t go running about disguised as Sherlock Holmes. Rather bad taste, dragging one’s trade into one’s amusements. No, I’ll come as something quite unostentatious: a pillar-box or an Invisible Man, or a spook, probably.”
“I forgot,” Cecil hastened to say, apologetically, “I shouldn’t have asked you about your costume. Joan’s very strong on some fancy regulation she’s made that no one is to know beforehand what anyone else is wearing. She wants the prize awarding to be absolutely unbiased. So you’d better not tell me what you’re going to do.”
Sir Clinton glanced at him with a faint twinkle in his eye.
“That’s precisely what I’ve been doing for the last minute or two,” he said, dryly.
“What do you mean?” Cecil asked, looking puzzled. “You haven’t told me anything.”
“Exactly.”
Cecil was forced to smile.
“No harm done,” he admitted. “You gave nothing away.”
“It’s a very useful habit in my line of business.”
But Sir Clinton’s interest in the approaching masked ball was apparently not yet exhausted.
“Large crowd coming?” he asked.
“Fairish, I believe. Most of the neighbours, I suppose. We’re putting up a few people for the night, of course; and there are three or four visitors on the premises already. It should be quite a decent show. I can’t give you even rough numbers, for Joan’s taken the invitation side of the thing entirely into her own hands—most mysterious about it, too. Hush! Hush! Very Secret! and all that kind of thing. She won’t even let us see her lists for fear of making it too easy to recognize people; so she’s had to arrange the catering side of the thing on her own as well.”
“She always was an independent kind of person,” Sir Clinton volunteered.
Cecil took no notice of the interjection.
“If you ask me,” he went on, “I think she’s a bit besotted with this incognito notion. She doesn’t realize that half the gang can be spotted at once by their walk, and the other half will give themselves away as soon as they get animated and begin to jabber freely. But it’s her show, you know, so it’s no use anyone else butting in with criticisms and spoiling her fun before it begins.”
Sir Clinton nodded his assent; but for a moment or two he seemed to be preoccupied with some line of thought which Cecil’s words had started in his mind. Suddenly, however, something caught his eye and diverted his attention to external things.
“What’s that weird thing over there?” he asked.
As he spoke, he pointed to an object a little way off the path on which they were standing. It was a tiny building about a yard in height and a couple of yards or more in length. At the first glance it seemed like a bungalow reduced to the scale of a large doll’s house; but closer inspection showed that it was windowless, though ventilation of a sort appeared to have been provided. A miniature door closed the entrance, through which a full-grown man could gain admittance only by lying flat on the ground and wriggling with some difficulty through the narrow opening provided.
“That?” Cecil answered carelessly. “Oh, that’s one of the Fairy Houses, you know. They’re a sort of local curiosity. No matter where you are, you’ll find one of them within a couple of hundred yards of you, anywhere in the grounds.”
“Only in the grounds? Aren’t there any outside the estate?” inquired Sir Clinton. “At the first glance I took it for some sort of archaeological affair.”