and leave my good wife to her various social engagements. The bottom lands and the river bluffs are the best places in the state for bird life. Up here I see no one but birds and the unique Valley Farms household.’
‘You have a house near Mr. Gladstone’s?’ she asked. ‘How nice! Then perhaps I’ll be seeing you.’
‘You’ll be seeing me tonight at dinner,’ he said, ‘than which for me nothing could be nicer. But one can hardly call my little hide-out a house, especially when you compare it with Valley Farms which is almost a feudal estate. All I possess is a one-room shack near the top of a small bluff, overlooking the river. But there is a fine view, so perhaps you’ll drop in on me sometime. I’m not more than a mile from the big house.’
‘I’d love to!’ she exclaimed. ‘Perhaps I could bring June along.’
‘June too, of course,’ he said, ‘if she would care to come. She has never done me that honour so far. June’s a rather queer child, I think Felix will agree, but I have never found her dull. I think your visit may be interesting, Miss Archer. I hope it may be happy – or at any rate profitable. Of course out here we’re very remote; it’s a little world of its own. I’m sure at any rate that it will be a new kind of experience for you.’
‘Now, Professor,’ Felix exclaimed, ‘you’re talking as if Miss Archer was about to bury herself in the African jungle. Don’t let him scare you, Miss Archer. He’s got quite an imagination, the professor has.’
And suddenly Kate remembered the strange note that was in her purse. The nervousness, the doubt she had felt alone in her bedroom swept over her again with a qualm as of seasickness. Because in her room there was still time to retreat: she need not, after all, have answered the knock on the door; she could have written Mr. Gladstone that she had changed her mind; but now that she had started it was too late. She felt as if she were in one of the little cars on a roller coaster. It was slowly pulling her up the long slant to the dizzying take-off; at any moment the plunge would begin, and she could not get out; she could not stop the car; she could only draw in her breath and close her eyes tight, and swear never to get trapped in such a thing again.
Then she was glad this feeling had come back, because obviously the way to strip the note of its mystery was to tell Mr. Hatfield about it, Mr. Hatfield and Felix: it would be no longer a secret, no longer something buried in her mind, but a trivial objective fact of common knowledge.
‘I’ve had a new experience already’, she said. ‘Not very important but it sort of worried me a little. You’ll probably think I’m foolish.’
Professor Hatfield cocked his eye at her, and leaned forward as a robin might do if he thought he saw a worm. ‘I’m sure not’, he said. ‘What is it?’
Kate opened her purse, took out the note and handed it to him. He stared at it for a long minute with his lashes drawn together. ‘Hmmm-hmmm’ he muttered at last, in a tone that reminded her of Dr. Medway whenever he examined her teeth. ‘Have you told Felix about this?’
‘I’ve told nobody. It arrived in the two o’clock mail this afternoon.’
The reassuring laugh she had expected did not come; Professor Hatfield’s expression remained thoughtful, and the beauty of these wild hills seemed all at once faintly poisonous, as if the region were enchanted.
‘May I tell him about it?’ the professor asked.
She tried to laugh. ‘Of course. Why not? You don’t think it means anything?’
‘Listen, Felix’, Professor Hatfield said. ‘What do you think of this? DON’T GO TO MR. GLADSTONE’S. YOU’LL BE SORRY IF YOU DO. Sort of an ominous start for poor Miss Archer’s visit, isn’t it?’
‘It looks to me,’ Felix said, ‘like some kind of a joke; but if it is, it’s a damn poor one. You’ll excuse my language, I hope.’
‘A joke? Hmmm . . .’ The professor squinted as if he were peering into the future. ‘Well, very possibly. And now, Felix, if you’ll let me out at the top of the next hill, I’ll coast down the lane to the foot of my bluff.’
In a minute the car stopped again and Felix was lifting out the bicycle as neatly as he had lifted it in.
‘There’s Valley Farms’, Professor Hatfield said, pointing down the long steep hill ahead of them. ‘You get the best view of the estate from here. I’m over there to the left, beyond those woods.’
‘How perfectly lovely!’ Kate exclaimed, and for a moment she forgot everything in the charm of the view.
Directly below them was a huge green bowl, chequered with woods and fields, and cut in two by the white line of the highway. To the left of the road there clustered a group of red-roofed buildings, surrounded by shrubberies, by gardens and lawns – the whole thing shining in the mid-afternoon light with a strange liquid clearness as if you were staring down at it through still water.
Professor Hatfield got out of the car and shook Kate’s hand.
‘I’ll be seeing you tonight then’, he said.
He took his bicycle from Felix, swung his foot over the bar, and turned back to give her one more of his shrewd glances. ‘Perhaps I should explain,’ he added, ‘that it wasn’t just the wording of your note that interested me. Had it occurred to you that the red crayon might be meant to suggest the idea of blood?’
Chapter Two
KATE waited on the front steps while Felix lifted out her bags. She had never seen a more charming house; its whole atmosphere was reassuring. It was of whitewashed brick long and low, with blue-shuttered french windows opening on to a grassy terrace. The lawn through which the driveway wound stretched for acres behind her, scattered with oaks, with birches, with huge pines, and beyond it, like a spectacular green wall, the wooded hills seemed to rise almost vertically to shut out the rest of the world. The air had a damp freshness down here which brought out sharply the smell of grass and leaves – perhaps because the river was so near.
She had noticed a whining and scratching from inside the door, and as Felix opened it a little black and white beagle dashed out, wriggled first around Felix’s legs, then around hers, then flew circling over the lawn, its ears waving, its tail held high like a pennant.
‘How perfectly darling!’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s his name? How old is he?’
‘It’s a young lady’, Felix said. ‘Her name is Bobbie, and she’s not quite five months old.’
Kate watched her with delight as she stopped so suddenly she fell all over herself, grabbed a large stick, dashed back to the door and dropped the stick at Kate’s feet. Then with her chin on the ground between her front paws, her hindquarters raised, her tail wagging frantically, she looked up at Kate with dark liquid eyes. Kate could not resist stooping down. The little hound thrust its head between her outstretched hands, and Kate could feel through the silky skin the bones of her skull and jaw, as delicate and buoyant as those of a bird.
‘I see you’ve made friends already’, Felix said. ‘Bobbie certainly has good taste.’
As Kate stood up she saw a woman in black with a maid’s apron walking toward the door from the back of the wide hallway. She was middle-aged, with a weathered handsome face and thin brown hair pulled back from her forehead and temples.
‘My
