Other Paths to Glory by Anthony Price Page B

half obscured by a trailing spray of yew, was the two-line legend ‘Welling Lod’, which put him in mind irresistibly of Piglet’s ‘Trespassers W’ in Winnie-the-Pooh.
    ‘Well, here we go,’ murmured Audley as he swung the car into the narrow opening. The General evidently values his privacy.’
    The same thought was crossing Mitchell’s mind: the yew at the entrance was the forward sentry of a whole avenue of them, their branches often interlaced above. It was like travelling down a tunnel with air shafts revealing grey sky at irregular intervals; and they were very old, these trees, their twisted trunks thick and hairy with shredded bark. If the General ever decided to raise a regiment of archers there was enough wood here for a thousand longbows.
    But now there was light ahead at the end of the tunnel, and a stretch of lawn which seemed vivid emerald after the sombre driveway. It was strange how the yew tree, which in death provided such warm, golden wood for furniture, was so dark and funereal in life, with its poisonous foliage and deadly red berries.
    ‘Good lord!’ Audley said suddenly. ‘What a beauty!’
    Wellingbourne Lodge lay at right angles to them, long, low, and as ancient as the oaks which flamed it. It seemed, indeed, to grow out of the grass as naturally as the trees themselves, its stonework and brick chimneys weathered into the setting, if anything more restrained than the yellows and golds of the autumn trees. The only dabs of contrasting colour were the blooms of the huge old rose clinging to it, seemingly independent of the ground: just as the house grew out of the grass, so the roses appeared to spring out of the stonework.
    ‘Wonders will never cease,’ murmured Audley. ‘Early Tudor -practically untouched, probably a hunting lodge. And on the site of something very much older - see that dimpled line there to the right of it, by the - it must be a mulberry - and where it turns across the front of the house? That’s the remains of a moat for sure: there was a castle here once upon a time. Or at least a fortified manor. The ground never lies, you can’t put a spade in it without leaving a mark, you know.’
    He shook his head wisely.
    ‘It’s astonishing how many of these old places there are. Once I thought I knew every one south of the Thames, but new ones are always turning up - usually when some stupid bastard wants to put a motorway through it.’
    He turned, grimacing horribly, then did a double-take as he saw Mitchell’s face.
    ‘What’s the matter?’
    Aware too late that he had betrayed himself, Mitchell was at once in two minds about explaining truthfully - or even trying to explain - the sense of unreality which had assailed him, or shrugging it off and allowing himself to be led like a donkey along any strange path Audley chose.
    ‘What’s the matter, Paul?’ Audley repeated. ‘Does it surprise you that I should be interested in old buildings?’
    ‘A little.’
    Mitchell tried to buy time with a partially false explanation: with two dead men behind them and last evening’s nightmare a recurrent and fearful memory, anything normal was not so much surprising as incongruous. Even the khaki sleeve on his lap was a reminder of his divorce from the real world. It was his arm in that sleeve, his body in the uniform; but he wasn’t Paul Mitchell any more. This morning Paul Mitchell would have eaten his cornflakes and read his Guardian in the train, and then caught his usual bus to the Institute for another slow, quiet day’s research.
    Now he was someone else, not even someone real, but an imaginary creation of the man beside him, existing in a world as shadowy as the driveway behind them. Captain Lefevre hadn’t read a paper this morning or listened to the radio; he knew nothing about art or politics or religion, and cared less.
    So naturally Captain Lefevre wasn’t interested in Tudor hunting lodges and motorways. Only real people were interested in such