The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “And Dame Beatrice? Has she seen it or is she only interested in the hunting of the snark?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No? You do surprise me, darling Laura!”

  CHAPTER 6

  DIVISION OF FORCES: (2) KILMARTIN VALLEY

  “Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise.”

  Habakkuk 2:19 (Authorised Version)

  A study of the road map, which was rendered necessary because there had been no previous plan to visit the Kilmartin valley, had suggested to Owen that it would be easier to go to Oban and find the objective from there, rather than to take the more complicated (as it appeared to him), although maybe shorter, route by turning off at Dalmally and running along the east side of Loch Awe.

  Lionel, however, opted for the latter route, and he and his passengers arrived at the inn before the others. The sites to be visited were not all that far from the village, but the inn was the rendezvous for lunch when the two drivers had decided to follow different routes after leaving Dalmally.

  When the party was reunited, it was apparent that some tempers had been ruffled. Owen’s usual urbanity was slightly disturbed when he discovered that Lionel’s party had reached Kilmartin before his, Stewart affected to be quietly furious because Capella had gone to Arran instead of staying with him, and Lionel and Clarissa had not resolved their quarrel and had not been on speaking terms during the whole of the journey. Only Dame Beatrice and Catherine appeared to have remained unperturbed, and to them was left the task of maintaining the semblance of an amicable conversation at lunch. After lunch Lionel put up the bonnet of his car and busied himself with tinkering with the engine while Clarissa walked on without speaking to him.

  “Will you be able to manage all right, Dame Beatrice?” Owen asked solicitously. “Of course there is no need to see it all. Lionel and I have agreed to leave the cars unlocked so that the ladies can return to them and take a rest when they have had enough. There is a certain amount of walking involved, but even if people do not manage to cover the whole complex I am sure that what they do see will prove of exceptional interest.”

  “I hope that is so,” said Stewart, coming up, “since I am the person who has brought you all here. You’d probably have enjoyed Arran far more, if only for the sake of the sea-trip and the island itself.”

  “Here,” said Owen, taking no apparent notice of this, and speaking in an authoritative tone which surprised some of his hearers, “we shall find a rich collection of cairns and decorated stones. As we proceed, Stewart and I will do our best to answer any questions.”

  “I thought this was to be a holiday,” said Stewart, “not a lecture tour. I want my time for myself, not for instructing other people by providing information which they could well have looked up for themselves before we started.”

  “Well, how curmudgeonly!” said Catherine. “You were anxious enough to show off your knowledge at Castlerigg. Stop sulking because that unreliable young girl has defaulted, and show me round this obviously important site. You will find that my ignorance is surpassed only by my willingness to learn.”

  “Let me start you off, my boy,” said Owen, marshalling the party. “This site belongs more to the Bronze Age than to Neolithic Man, although you will find his traces here, as Stewart and I will point out. The first thing to realise is that, in the early Bronze Age, society had become what we may call individualised. Collective, tribal, and social undertakings such as the formation of very large but comparatively simple stone circles and the long-barrow communal graves had given way to single burials and, besides that, it seems likely that wealth, in whatever form it was reckoned, had come into its own and a new social structure had resulted.

  “Hadingham thinks that the cairns we are about to see represent the burials of a tribal dynasty, leaders who were not only chiefs but, to my mind, held almost the position of kings. He also thinks that this burial ground in the Kilmartin valley may have been in use for as much as two thousand years, one wave of owners succeeding another.

  “The earliest structure you will see is a large—in fact, a massive—collective chambered tomb and the individual burials followed this, although excavation has shown that the Beaker People, who began coming here in about 1900 B.C., may have used this chambered long-barrow, with its multiple entombments, to house some of their own dead. Now, my boy”—he turned to Stewart—“that should start you off. Who will join Stewart and Catherine, and who will follow me?”

  “I will have Stewart to myself,” said Catherine. “It is all going to be most interesting and I want to concentrate on what he is able to tell me. I do not wish to be distracted by idle chatter.” She took Stewart by the sleeve and led him away. “I had not realised, though, when my cousin invited me to come along on this tour, that there would be quite so much emphasis on death,” she added, as the two of them made their way along the footpath which led to the first of the cairns. “Do you think he is morbidly preoccupied with it?”

  “With what? Oh, with death! I shouldn’t think so.”

  “I thought the Truth Game was rather morbid.”

  “Did you? I’m afraid I treated it as a joke.”

  “That would be one way, I suppose, but I do not lay claim to a sense of humour, so we will be very serious. Please let my instruction begin.”

  “Certainly, so long as you bear in mind that what I shall express are not opinions arrived at by my own researches, but are simply the result of a certain amount of mugging-up.”

  “You should not waste your time on that girl when you have important academic work to do.”

  “Young Capella? Oh, that’s just to unbend the mind. I must have a little relaxation, you know, and pursuing the wench provides it.”

  “It is not a scholarly occupation and it is obviously embarrassing for the girl herself. If I am not mistaken, she is virgo intacta at present, so leave her alone.”

  “Good Lord! I wouldn’t dream of upsetting her apple-cart. I am like the huntsman who never catches a fox. I enjoy the gallop, that’s all. I’m more than willing to jump the fences or any other obstacles, but I don’t give a tinker’s curse about the end product. I can buy that if and when I want it, so don’t fret, dear maiden aunt. No respectable young woman will ever carry a load of mischief so far as I have any part in the transaction. If the female Barkis is willing, that is a different matter, and need not concern us at this juncture.”

  “Your conversational style might be considered offensive by some people,” said Catherine, “but I believe you are as virtuous as you claim to be. As for your addressing me as your maiden aunt”—she laughed with unaffected amusement and, it could be thought, pleasure—“there are compensations, no doubt, in bearing even that anomalous relationship towards you.”

  “Anomalous?” said Stewart. “Irregular? Abnormal? You tread on strange ground, dear aunt. By the way, talking of relationships, Lionel and Clarissa had the father and mother of a row before we set out, I think. They had not a word to say to one another on the way here. It looks as though they’re still not on speaking terms at the moment. I hope it soon blows over.”

  “They have quarrelled? Good gracious! What was the bone of contention?”

  “The answers to the Truth Game last night, I expect. Clarissa may have thought that Lionel had given some deep, dark secret away by his answers to the questions—or, of course, vice versa.”

  “How interesting! One would like to be better informed.”

  “Sorry I can’t help you there. Their conversation, if and when it is resumed, may be acrimonious but, if I am right, it will also be carefully guarded. They will hardly be outspoken with the terrifying Dame B. able to hear everything they say in the car.”

  “There is something out of focus in their relationship, I feel. One wonders whether they really are married. I notice that they occupy separate rooms at the hotels.”

  “Probably one of them snores. Are you prepared to descen
d into this central cist, or are you inclined to claustrophobia?”

  “I don’t think many women care for deep, dark, enclosed spaces. I once was persuaded to descend into the prehistoric flint mines in the Norfolk Breckland and felt most unpleasantly apprehensive down there. But how did you know?”

  Stewart did not answer. He said,

  “Grimes Graves? Oh, yes. I once went into a coalmine. Never again! Well, whatever else we miss in this place, we must have a look at the Temple Wood circle. There are cup-markings on a central stone which were only discovered in 1973 because they were partly hidden by the packing of stones used to keep the monolith upright.”

  “Is that of special interest?”

  “Yes, because archaeologists have thought that the ring-marks were sometimes made on the sacred stones before they were actually erected, and the fact that this particular carving remained hidden for so long seems to prove it.”

  “I had no idea that you could be such an interesting and informative companion.”

  “We do our best to please.”

  “I am glad we came here instead of going to Arran. I am also glad that my cousin has Dame Beatrice in tow. Would you call her a sinister woman? I noted that you think her terrifying.”

  “Sinister? No, I don’t think that is the word. Witchlike, perhaps, but there are white witches as well as black ones. Terrifying? Oh, rather! Yes, terrifying indeed.”

  “Like Owen, she has a morbid preoccupation with death, has she not?”

  “Would you say that? In spite of her great age, I would call her one of the most ‘alive’ people I know. She investigates murders, that’s all, and only in the public interest.”

  “Talking of enclosed spaces,” said Catherine, “I must admit that I dread the thought of my last narrow enclosure. Would that I could be laid out in seemly fashion in the open air in the sun and the wind on some desert island and have it left to the wild creatures and the great predatory birds to pick me clean. Skeletons are beautiful structures if one has no malformations, and I have none. I would like to be a perfect skeleton lying out in the sun and the breezes.”

  “Who’s being morbid now?” said Stewart, somewhat astonished by the strange but poetic picture which she had painted and presented. “What about cremation?”

  “Cremation? Oh, but why anticipate hell, when one’s soul will go there anyway?” said Catherine, to his further astonishment.

  “Here,” said Owen, as his party reached a huge pile of pebbles, “we have the most northerly of the five cairns which make up this early Bronze Age cemetery. It is the least spectacular, perhaps, and has been named Glebe Cairn, I suppose because of its proximity to Kilmartin Church.”

  “Its name is the best thing about it,” said Clarissa, “just as my name is the best thing about me.”

  “The sites improve in interest as we proceed,” said Owen, declining to comment on the last part of her remark. “At no great distance we have Nether Largie north cairn and Nether Largie mid-cairn.”

  He led the way to them. Both contained stone burial cists and it was possible, although only Clarissa made the attempt, to enter the burial chamber in the Nether Largie north cairn.

  “Both cairns, as the name implies, were originally heaped over with pebbles,” Owen went on when Clarissa rejoined them, “and both were excavated. Road-repairs, too, account for the removal of many of the stones from the mounds.”

  Nether Largie south cairn was of special interest, according to Owen, for this was the one which had been begun as a Neolithic burial place and contained a four-part burial chamber.

  “Well, now,” he said, “if you want to see any more, the area, as you will have noticed, is well sign-posted, but a certain amount of walking is necessary. I myself am anxious to exchange views with Stewart and then I want to go back to the car and make some notes. Please feel free to do exactly as you wish. If you care to walk so far, you will find the stone circle of Temple Wood just to the west of us. It is well worth a visit, although Ri Cruin cairn may prove a little too far. However, you have plenty of time.”

  “I’d love a walk,” said Clarissa, “and I’d like to see as much as I can while I’m here.”

  “Then let us seek out Ri Cruin,” said Dame Beatrice, “and take in Temple Wood on our way back.”

  “Professor Owen wants to keep an eye on Catherine, I think, but I’m glad to get you alone, Dame Beatrice,” said Clarissa as they set out. “Will you answer a question I have no right to ask?”

  “Put your question and then you will know whether or not I shall answer it.”

  “I have two questions, as a matter of fact, one of which I think is perfectly proper, so I will ask that one first and then you may feel more inclined to answer the other one. Oh, well, actually there are three things I would like to know. Two are, in a sense, my business, the other is not, and you may think, and rightly, that it’s an impertinence on my part to ask it.”

  “Then I will save you embarrassment by stating at once that Mrs. Gavin and I have not quarrelled or had any difference of opinion at all. She wanted to go across to Arran and so did the Sisters. Why Miss Babbacombe-Starr elected to accompany them I do not know. Possibly it was to free herself for a bit from Mr. Stewart’s attentions.”

  “You have guessed the question, but you haven’t completed the answer, have you?”

  “You wish to know why I did not accompany the party which went to Arran?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Ask your other questions and maybe you will find out the complete answer to the first one.”

  “You sound as though you know what the other questions will be.”

  “Perhaps I can guess one of them, but put me through your Shorter Catechism and we shall see.”

  “I’ll ask the inoffensive one first. Have you been aware of an extra member of our party?—somebody, either man or woman, who dodges behind the megaliths in the stone circles we have visited and wants to be with us and yet to keep out of sight as far as possible?”

  “I will emulate the Jews, who are said to answer a question by asking another: have you been aware of such a person?”

  “No, I haven’t. Capella Starr mentioned the matter to me in Cumbria and asked me whether I had seen anyone and I had to say that I had not. I wished I could have told her differently, because I’m afraid she is a highly-strung and rather morbid girl. She said she wondered whether she was the person you had been asked to keep an eye on because she was going mad. She isn’t, is she?”

  “My dear child, I assure you, on my most solemn word, that I have not been asked to keep an eye on anybody in the party. Whether Professor Owen had any ulterior motive in inviting me to become a member of his tour I have no idea, but nothing has been said to me by him to suggest anything of the sort you mention. Now I will answer your question: like yourself, I have not been aware of any clandestine presence at the sites I have visited. On the other hand, two of our party have. You mentioned Miss Starr, and I can mention, so Laura tells me, Sister Veronica.”

  “I thought I had sharp eyes, but I’ve seen nothing, as I say.”

  “Possibly there has been nothing to see.”

  “Of course there have been other people about,” said Clarissa, ignoring the implications of Dame Beatrice’s last remark. “I mean, we haven’t had the places entirely to ourselves. One wouldn’t expect it. But that’s not what Capella meant.”

  “Quite. Perhaps it would be wise to leave it at that, and conclude that there is no extra member of our party.”

  “My last question—and, whether you answer it or not, do please forgive me for asking it, but it is very important to me.”

  “And has something to do—if you will forgive me—with the rather noticeable rift, only a temporary one, I trust—between you and Mr. Lionel?”

  “Yes. I shall have to kiss and make up. I can’t bear being out with him. Dame Beatrice, what did you make of our answers to Professor Owen’s Truth Game?”

  “Mr. Stewart was the on
ly person who elected to be flippant. I thought the rest of you had told the truth, but not the whole truth.”

  “And Lionel’s answers?”

  “They cannot have impressed me, or I should have remembered them.”

  “Oh, they didn’t impress you in any way?”

  “Not in any way at all. Nothing of them stays in my mind.”

  “I tried to make him tell me what he had put, but he got angry.”

  “And you were afraid I might read between the lines and leap to unwarrantable conclusions?”

  “I suppose so. They might not have been unwarrantable, you see.”

  “Make your mind easy. Any conclusions I may have come to about the various members of our party, I reached long before Professor Owen proposed his dangerous Truth Game.”

  “Oh, you saw it as dangerous?”

  “Yes, indeed. The whole truth is always dangerous and a half-truth is more dangerous still. The human mind is all too prone to attempt to fill in the other half-truth, and that can indeed be perilous. I think I see our objective. Shall we change the subject and share our views on Ri Cruin cairn?”

  “On the way back I’m going to look behind every stone in the Temple Wood circle. If there is somebody following us around, I’ve got to know who it is,” said Clarissa.

  “Morbid imaginings, secret fears, or idle curiosity?”

  “I don’t like being spied upon.”

  “Who does? Very well, we will play ring o’ roses round every monolith in Temple Wood, if that will ease your mind.”

  “Well, if there is anybody fooling about, they would be more likely to have followed our party rather than the four who’ve gone to Arran.”

  “Why so?”

  “Well, I can’t imagine anybody wanting to spy on Mrs. Gavin or the nuns.”

  “That still leaves Miss Babbacombe-Starr, and, since we are bandying names, who, of our group here, would you pick out as a possible victim of espionage if you think we are being spied on? Yourself, for one, obviously. Who else?”

  “Any one of us, I suppose, and perhaps you in particular. Don’t you get scared at times about the murderers you have brought to justice? They must have friends, you know, and, what is more, friends who wouldn’t stop at very much.”