Here Lies Gloria Mundy

This involved a walk on a rough but well-trodden path alongside a big field. The path was bordered by bushes on the right-hand side, but my objective was straight ahead of me and could not be missed. I went up to it, carrying my candle, matches and the key, and looked doubtfully at the very low wooden doorway with which the Ministry of Works had replaced the original neolithic stone portal, and decided not to make use of the key after all.

My shoes were already muddy and almost soaked through, and I could see no way of insinuating myself into the tomb without getting my clothes covered in mud, for to get inside the long barrow involved, so far as I could determine, crawling in on hands and knees.

However, the view from Hetty Pegler was well worth the visit. Like other long barrows — I am thinking particularly of Belas Knap on Cleeve Cloud — Hetty Pegler’s Tump was high up and furnished the widest possible views except those gained from an aeroplane. Particularly there was the gleam of silver which I knew was the Severn and I could even make out the Welsh mountains on the other side of it, and, nearer at hand, the dips and slopes and autumn colouring of the wolds.

I returned the key, candle and matches and drove back to Beeches Lawn by a hilly, wooded road which writhed about, but took me to the railway station and so home. We dined earlier than usual that evening. I was missing the other guests, but it was what people call ‘a good miss’. I am not a very sociable man, preferring, as I do, my own company to that of others. In this case, moreover, none of the house-party, with the exception of Dame Beatrice, had appealed to me much, although I would have made an exception in favour of Marigold Coberley. However, her husband had guarded her with such a jealous eye that it was difficult even to get speech with her, let alone the tête-à-tête I would have liked.

After dinner Anthony said he had a vestry meeting and left us. Celia refused to have the drawing-room curtains drawn, although those in the dining-room had been closed. She said there would be what she called ‘a stormy sunset’ and she wanted to enjoy it. The drawing-room was exceptionally large. It had a huge bay window with china cabinets built in on either side and in the same wall there was a glass-topped door which opened on to the path round the lawn. On one side of the fireplace there were shelves for bric-à-brac and on the other side there was another window from which the copper beech tree dominated the outlook. I stood at this window and thought how pleasant domesticity could be.

There was a long ridge of low-lying cloud behind the hills and the evening light which came in through the big bay window to my right threw lurid colour from the setting sun on to the further wall. Celia wanted to go up on to the roof to get a fuller view of the sunset, but I demurred at first. It would be chilly up there, I said, and, after the rain, the leads would be slippery and could be dangerous. I reminded her of Marigold’s accident.

However, she insisted, so we put on wraps, climbed the stairs and went along a passage to where a trap-door and a loft ladder could take us on to the flat part of the roof.

‘Hullo,’ said Celia, when we had emerged. ‘Where’s all that smoke coming from? Something must be on fire.’

‘Perhaps your gardener is having his bonfire without waiting for our help,’ I said.

‘Nonsense, Corin! It’s the old house!’

It was fortunate that the town was so near. The fire brigade reached us in a matter of minutes. I left Celia in the house and went along to see the conflagration. The old house was a mass of flames. There was billowing smoke and crackling wood and, although the fire brigade soon had the situation under control, the damage was done and where the old house had stood there soon remained nothing but a charred mess of burnt wood deluged with water and the grim skeleton of blackened walls.

‘So much for that,’ said Celia, when I told her, but there was more, far more, to come.

‘Was the property insured?’ I asked Anthony when he returned to the house. He said that it was, but only the fabric itself, as any furniture had been moved out long ago.

‘What I can’t make out,’ he went on, ‘is how the fire started, especially after all the rain we’ve had.’

‘Hooligans. Probably the same gang as were responsible for Mrs Coberley’s accident, don’t you think?’

‘If so, it’s a police matter. I shall see to it that every enquiry is made. An empty house does not go up in flames because of internal combustion.’

‘I suppose — I mean, Miss Brockworth did tell us that she had met Miss Mundy in there,’ I said tentatively.