Anne Belinda

EARLY BIRD BOOKS

FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

BE THE FIRST TO KNOW—

NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

Anne Belinda

Patricia Wentworth

PROLOGUE

John Maurice Waveney came round the turn of the path and looked down into the valley. The side of the hill fell sheer away. A little zigzag track ran to and fro amongst the roots of the great, bare beech trees and dropped at last to the valley.

John Maurice looked at the track, whistled through his teeth, and then made the best of his way down it. Leg or no leg, he wasn't going to turn back now. He had come to have a look at Waveney, and he wasn't going back without that look. He climbed down slowly and very carefully, as befitted a man only three days out of hospital. Every now and then he sat down on a beech root and rested.

The year was 1917, and the month was May. After wet, squally weather there had come half a dozen days of pure enchantment. The pale blue sky was so brimmed with the sun that all the shadows looked warm and soft. The valley was the valley of a dream, full of still, golden light and a green mist of breaking leaves. John Maurice looked at it, and found it worth the climb.

He slid the last couple of yards and began to walk rather haltingly along the so-called level, which was not really level at all. The path followed an erratic thread of water, sometimes dammed into a pool, sometimes falling like a single thread from a real waterfall, sometimes burying itself in a little marsh of moss. John Maurice found it very attractive. He drank from one of the baby pools, and felt an absurd secret thrill because he and the stream bore the same name. This was the Waveney. He was on ground which had belonged to his forefathers for more generations than he could count. From this valley Sir Anthony Waveney had gone out to ride with Richard Cœur de Lion on Crusade.

John Maurice wondered whether the Crusader's helmet was as uncomfortable as his own tin hat. Then he grinned and went limping on his way, singing in a funny toneless whisper:

“Augustus Fitzlucius O'Ryan

Was the loftiest soul on the earth.

His mother was Susie O'Brien,

And his wife was a Jones by birth.”

The path rose abruptly and climbed a sort of rocky bastion, leaving the little Waveney far below. John Maurice was panting when he got to the top. He flung himself down on a drift of beech leaves and looked about him. The blighted path, having climbed all that way up, was now going to climb all the way down on the other side.

He got his breath and observed the view. The rocky cliff on which he lay dropped sheer to the thread of water. Ten feet away the other half of the cliff reared itself, its crumbling face screened by a little birch tree in its first leaf. The sun made the green of it tremble like green fire. How many hundreds of years, how many ages, had it taken for the little stream to cut its way through the rock and leave the twin cliffs parted?

John Maurice had some queer thoughts. He whistled to himself and let his thoughts make pictures for him. The sun shone, and the beech leaves were soft. He watched a spider with long, thin legs run delicately across the red-brown leaves. He heard a thrush begin to sing, and break off with half his song unsung. Someone said, “What are you doing here?”

John Maurice sat up. In front of him, looking down on him from the other cliff, there was a girl of about fifteen. She held a branch of the birch tree aside and looked at him out of dark blue eyes. She had long, falling plaits of dark brown hair. She wore a very much stained brown holland overall; there was a green smudge on one of her smooth, pale cheeks.

“What are you doing here?” she said in quite an accusing voice.

John Maurice scrambled to his feet, made a horrible face, and dropped again to a sitting position.

“Sorry,” he said.

“What for?”

“I forgot about my leg—I have to go easy with it.”

“What's the matter with it?”

“Oh, it's practically all right. I'm going back next week.”

The girl continued to hold back the branch and to look at John Maurice. Her plaits were so long that she had pushed them under the leather belt which held her overall.

“France?” she said. A curious fleeting expression just touched her eyes, her voice.

John Maurice nodded.

“You're on leave—with your people?”

The curious something came again, and again was gone. John Maurice wondered what it was.

“I haven't any people.”

“None? None at all?”

“Nary one, except a great-unclish sort of cousin whom I've never seen in my life.”

The odd look went away. It was like a cloud going away; the sun shone very suddenly and sweetly. The dark blue eyes brimmed with a smile. The girl said:

“I'm so frightfully glad. Aren't you?”

“Why? Because I haven't any relations?”

“Of course.”

“Balmy,” said John Maurice to himself. “Balmy but nice—nice but balmy.” Then he said aloud, “Do you mind explaining why?”

The girl let go of the branch. Then she climbed up a couple of feet and sat down cross-legged on a mossy stone. She had nice slim ankles and terribly shapeless old shoes.

“You said you were going back next week?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you haven't got any people, it doesn't matter.”

“Doesn't it?”

“No, of course not. I mean it doesn't matter to
you
if you're killed.”

John Maurice burst out laughing; there was such an earnest thrill in her voice, the dark blue eyes were so solemn, that for the life of him he couldn't help it. When he laughed, the girl flushed scarlet.

“Why should it matter to you? I don't see that it does a
bit
. I'm not sorry for the people who are killed—not a single bit. They're all right. I expect it's all frightfully interesting and exciting for them. I'm not going to waste my time being sorry for
them
. I don't care what anyone says; it's the people who are left—the people who can't go because they're too old or too young. How would you like that? How would you like to be a girl at home, when your brothers had gone and you couldn't go?”

“I don't know that I've ever wanted to be a girl,” said John Maurice candidly.

The long dark plaits jerked with the vehemence of her nod.

“Of course you didn't. No one ever does.”

John Maurice looked at her with amusement, and something else. She was a pretty kid—this from the height of his twenty-three years. Comic too, with her solemn eyes, and the smudge on her cheek, and her earnest assurance that his being killed wouldn't matter in the least. The whole thing tickled him; but he was young enough to feel a little aggrieved.

“That's all very well, you know. There's something a bit chilly about feeling that no one's going to care a blow.”

“That can't be helped.” But she frowned a little and her colour rose. “Haven't you got anyone, really?”

He shook his head.

She had locked her hands about her knees—long, slim hands, very brown; they looked strong. There was a queer little mole between thumb and forefinger on one of them; it was shaped like a heart. It caught John Maurice's eye as he shook his head.

“Not a soul. The cousin would be rather bucked than otherwise.”

The dark blue eyes took on a deeper shade of earnestness.

“
I
should be sorry—I should be sorry about anyone,” she said. And as she said it, a distant “Cooee” came floating down the valley.

“That's for me,” said the girl.

She unclasped her hands, stood up, and scrambled down the rough face of the cliff. She jumped the last few feet, began to run, and then, turning, looked up at John Maurice.

“I promise I'll be sorry,” she said.

CHAPTER I

The car drew up in a drizzle of rain, and a young man sprang out. He stepped over the tortoise-shell cat which lay asleep on the top step of the village shop, and penetrated to the counter. To the left there were saucepans and trousers; to the right some marled bacon and two mouldy cauliflowers; overhead a ham, some balls of tarred twine, a packet of flypapers, and a miscellaneous collection of leather straps.

The young man banged on the counter and whistled between his teeth. Mr. Murgleton emerged, smoothing his grey whiskers and blinking his greenish eyes; he had the air of a dissipated elderly mouser.

“I want to know the way to Waveney Hall. I'd be awfully obliged if you could tell me how to get there.”

Disappointment lent austerity to Mr. Murgleton's voice.

“Up the 'ill and second to the left.” Then he added, “There ain't no one livin' there.”

“There's a caretaker, isn't there? I was told there was a caretaker.”

Mr. Murgleton gazed morosely at the fly-papers.

“There's Mrs. Mossiter,” he conceded, “
and
her daughter—
and
her daughter's babby, for that matter.” He sniffed, and the village spirit asserted itself. “It's time someone took the place in 'and. A year since Sir Anthony died, and nothin' seen to nor kep' up—goin' hall to bits is wot I should say if I was talkin' to the King 'isself, or to Sir John Waveney. May I ask if you know 'im?” The green eyes blinked inquisitively.

John Maurice Waveney did not answer the question. He had no desire to be hailed as the returning heir; he wanted to see the old place without any fuss and to make up his mind whether he wanted to live in it. He therefore backed away from the counter, scratched the back of the tortoise-shell cat's head, said “Second to the left and up the hill? Thank you very much,” and went out humming:

“Cassidy was a gentleman,

Cassidy said to me—”

The rest was lost in the whirr of the starter.

The second turning to the left was a narrowish lane. It went up a hill, and then came down again. At the very bottom there were great stone pillars and high iron gates. The pillars were covered with moss. The gates were shut.