LITMIR.BIZ

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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 wife’, Felix explained to Kate. ‘Ruby, my girl, let me present to you Miss Katherine Archer. Quite an addition to the household, if you ask me.’

      ‘I didn’t ask you’, the woman said in such a fierce voice that it almost made Kate jump. For an instant she glared at Felix; then she shrugged her shoulders and peered at Kate.

      ‘That outburst wasn’t meant for you, Miss Archer’, Felix apologized. ‘It was meant for me, though I’m afraid you’re partly to blame. Youth and beauty can be very disturbing as we grow older, can’t they, Ruby, my love?’

      Beneath the suavity of his tone there was a sudden hardness that Kate would not have expected: it seemed not so much Felix’s own voice as a reflection of his wife’s.

      ‘Oh shut up!’ the woman said; then as she turned to Kate her face lost something of its belligerence. ‘I’m sorry, miss’, she said. ‘But Felix is right. It wasn’t meant for you. We’re a queer household here at the farm, and you might as well learn it now as later.’

      ‘I’ll take up your bags’, Felix said. ‘Don’t let Ruby scare you, Miss Archer. Her bark is worse than her bite.’

      Felix walked back through the hall to the stairway, and Kate looked over her shoulder to see where Bobbie had gone. At first she did not discover her; but then she saw her, through the still-open door, a small black and white object racing around a pine tree a hundred yards or more from the house.

      ‘You better step in there’, Ruby said, escorting her to a doorway on the right. ‘Mr. Gladstone wants to talk to you before you see June. He’s lying down. I’ll go call him.’

      Kate, who was apt to be critical of furniture arrangements, glanced sharply about the room. It was large and low-ceiled, its floor entirely covered with a sea-green carpet, which recalled her impression, as they had looked down from the hilltop, that the valley was under water. For its size, the room was sparsely furnished: there were several sofas and easy chairs; along the walls stood two or three carved chests like pieces she had seen in Brittany. Besides the three french windows opening on the terrace, there was a fourth one, at the further end, screened by a Venetian blind; and through the slats she could see another, smaller terrace, this one paved not with grass but with red tiles and strewn with wicker chairs and tables. Beyond it, in the sunlight, she caught the gleam of delphinium and scarlet lilies.

      She thought of the grim woman who had just left her: perhaps Ruby, if she was as jealous of Felix as she seemed, had sent the note in a last effort to prevent the arrival of an attractive young girl in the house. ‘But of course Ruby had never seen me’, thought Kate, and then smiled at her own conceit. And yet, in fairness to herself, it was not really conceit: she had

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