Chapter 2
TWO
Daisy drove round a sharp bend and with startling suddenness found herself enveloped in fog.
A bank was hazily visible on her left only because the lane was so narrow.
The other side dropped into nothingness, with only an occasional boulder to mark the edge—of a precipice?
Heart in mouth, she nudged upwards, tensely alert to catch the sound of an approaching engine before she met it nose to nose.
The blue Gwynne—gleaming when she left Hampstead, dust-coated now—did not like grinding uphill at two miles per hour. It stalled. A muffled baa-ing and the burble of running water reached Daisy’s ears as she hastily set the hand brake, double declutched, and changed into neutral.
She pulled out the choke just a little, as the engine was warm—in fact, considering the hill, she was lucky the radiator wasn’t boiling over.
Thankful that she had insisted on buying a car with a self-starter, she pressed it.
An ineffectual whir caused a momentary alarm, then the motor coughed and started.
In first gear, she inched upwards again.
Seconds later, she emerged into bright sunshine. The incline lessened. The way ran straight for a quarter mile or so. The tumbling brook was right alongside the track now, four or five feet below.
What had looked like the crest of the slope turned out to be a minor ridge. The stream cut through it, under a stone bridge even narrower than the lane. On the bridge, Daisy stopped and gazed backwards.
Below her was a blank whiteness, as if the world had ceased to exist but for the smooth humped islands of the highest hills.
Turning to look ahead, she saw a shallow green valley opening out, protected on three sides by higher ridges.
The stream tumbled down the far slope then meandered towards her.
A copse stood out brilliant yellow in the late afternoon sun.
A square house of grey granite, its stone roof lichened and multi-chimneyed, showed its age by its small, mullioned casement windows.
Two more modern wings with larger sash windows, early Victorian perhaps, reached forwards to shelter a circular patch of colour that must be a flower garden.
Smoke trickled from the chimneys, promising warmth within. Though isolated, not eerie after all, Daisy was happy to note. Not really eyrie, either, since for that name the farmhouse ought to be perched on a crag, but she wasn’t about to quibble.
Feeling happier about her odd errand, she drove on and parked the Gwynne on the gravel sweep between the flowerbeds and the front door.
She sat for a moment in the car, tired—relieved to have arrived safely, enjoying the display of roses, chrysanthemums, asters, and Michaelmas daisies in the beds and the fading hydrangeas along the south-facing wall on either side of the door.
From the nearby copse of sycamores came the cawing of rooks.
Daisy shivered. The air was growing decidedly chilly.
The door had a large brass knocker in the shape of a bird of prey, appropriate, she supposed, to the eyrie. She rapped loudly.
Abruptly, before she could lower her hand, the door swung open.
The woman who stood there was certainly not a maid.
Short and plumpish, she wore a crimson wool frock, the hem a few inches below her knees as befitted her apparent age of somewhere just on the right side of fifty.
Over it was a warm, cable-knit cardigan.
She smiled. “Oh, hello, you must be Mrs. Fletcher. I’m Ruby Birtwhistle.
I was just going out to cut some asters for the dining room table.
” She had a slight accent, mostly Northern English with an odd touch of American, to Daisy’s surprise.
She waved a hand in a stained glove, wielding a pair of secateurs.
“Excuse me, won’t you? Do go on in. Lorna will have heard the knocker and be on her way. ”
With that, she slipped past Daisy and headed with a brisk step for the flower-garden, followed at a more dignified pace by a stiff, elderly black-and-white sheepdog. Daisy saw her stoop to pull a weed or two.
Amused at the odd welcome, Daisy stepped into a wide, low-beamed hall.
She guessed it to have been the main room of the old farmhouse.
The beams still had iron hooks where sides of ham and strings of onions must once have hung.
The floor was stone, with large, faded rugs here and there.
The ambience was a trifle gloomy in spite of walls and ceilings painted white, except for the beams. Well-stuffed Victorian sofas and chairs, reupholstered in the lilac and primrose floral patterns beloved of the Edwardians, clustered about the hearth.
A small coal fire in a wide iron grate in a large fireplace left the large room almost as chilly as outdoors.
Lorna—whoever she might be—did not immediately appear.
Nor did anyone else, so Daisy looked about her.
On either side, a staircase rose from the front to the rear of the hall.
Beneath the stairs, doors to left and right must surely lead to the wings.
There were two more doors in the back wall, one on each side of the fireplace, perhaps to the kitchen and what the Victorians called “domestic offices.”
It was very quiet, could almost have been deserted, but the solid stone walls of the old building were probably responsible. Even the raucous crowing of the rooks outside was cut off by the small windows. The eerie feeling returned.
Had Sybil simply succumbed to the atmosphere of dread in the isolated house? She had apparently been quite contented to live here for seven or eight years, so it hardly seemed likely.
And dread was far too melodramatic a word for the depressing effect.
One of the back doors opened and through it came a pale, gaunt woman with grey hair scraped back from her face into a bun. She was clad in a dark-grey dress with a drooping hem, a ratty mustard-coloured cardigan, and plaid carpet slippers.
At the same time, a girl appeared through the left-hand door, from the west wing.
She was an elegant figure in a low-cut pink-and-black silk frock that ended quite two inches higher than Lucy would have worn in town, let alone in the country.
Long, silk-clad legs ended in very high-heeled shoes that made them seem even longer.
Her head was turned to speak to someone following her, presenting to Daisy’s view a long bob of chestnut hair.
Daisy wondered if the colour was natural.
She couldn’t be sure in the dim light. It made a striking combination with the pink dress and a long string of pink glass beads.
Together with the extra-short skirt, the effect could be seen as a symbol of independence—or defiance.
Defiance of whom? What was her position in the household?
Did she have anything to do with Sybil’s mystery?
The girl turned. She looked to be eighteen or nineteen, ten years or so older than Sybil’s daughter could possibly be.
Seeing the droopy woman, she said, “Aunt Lorna, isn’t it about time to light the lamps? It’s like a dungeon in here.”
“I can’t do everything at once, Myra.” Her Northern accent was considerably stronger than Mrs. Birtwhistle’s. She gestured sullenly at Daisy, who had taken her for a maid, a function she appeared to fill. “Just coming to answer the door, I was.”
“Oh, how did you get in?” Myra asked Daisy, the words less than polite but the tone merely interested. “You must be Sybil’s friend. You’ve no idea what a relief it is to see a new face in this mouldy mausoleum.”
“Your … Mrs. Birtwhistle was just going out as I arrived. She invited me to step in.”
“Aunt Ruby’s always busy! This is my other aunt, Miss Birtwhistle. She’s always busy, too. Do come and sit by the fire and get warm while I give her a hand with the lamps.”
“I can manage them, thank you very much! Not a thing would get done in this household if we all had to wait on your help.”
Myra ignored the censorious part of this, but blithely accepted the first part as a rejection of her offer of assistance.
“Not that it’s much of a fire, I’m afraid,” she went on.
“Would you rather go to your room first? Oh, this is Walter, by the way.” She indicated with a casual wave the man who had followed her in.
“Walter Ilkton, I should say. Walter, this is Mrs. Fletcher. At least, I suppose that’s who you are? ”
“Right, first try. How do you do, Mr. Ilkton?”
Ilkton was considerably older than Myra, in his mid-thirties at a guess.
Tall and fair, he, too, was dressed rather more smartly than was appropriate for a farmhouse in the depths of Derbyshire.
He wore dark-grey “Oxford bags” and a black blazer with an Old Harrovian tie, black with double white stripes, transfixed with a large pink pearl tie-pin.
Apart from the pearl, he would have fitted nicely into a house party at one of the more formal country houses.
The vulgarly obtrusive pearl made Daisy doubt that he was justified in sporting the tie, but when he returned her greeting, his voice confirmed his schooling.
Though he spared her a glance as he spoke, his devoted—almost worshipful—attention was only momentarily diverted from Myra’s manifest charms.
These were revealed more clearly as Miss Birtwhistle shuffled round lighting oil lamps.
Neither gas nor electricity had yet made its way to the isolated farm.
In Daisy’s view, this was sufficient to account for Sybil’s sense of impending doom.
She could only hope modern plumbing was not likewise lacking but up here in the hills it seemed only too likely.
Be that as it might, Myra was an exceptionally pretty girl.
“Mrs. Birtwhistle is your aunt?”