The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes Page B

after all, why not? Certainly no one else would want it.
    This lonely Hermitage was a little romantic folly in 18th-century gothic: an architect’s freak, built of the biggest and knobbiest flints they could find and designed to look like a toothy fragment of ruined abbey (the largest window was a lancet, the rest more like arrow-slits). But it had been built for a habitable hermitage: indeed a professional hermit had originally been persuaded by a good salary to live there, groaning and beating his breast dutifully when visitors were brought to inspect him. Once hermits went out of fashion however it had mostly stood empty: it was too remote, as well as too uncomfortable ... the well even was a hundred feet deep, which is a long way to wind a bucket up.
    Aesthetically in Gilbert’s opinion so arrant a sham deserved dynamite. However, it still stood; and at least you could be sure the woman wouldn’t roost there long! Moreover his consent would stop Mary ...
    â€œStop Mary” doing what?—“Nagging him” was the dire meaning he expunged before it could even form in his mind. (Jeremy had once remarked unkindly that Gilbert didn’t know how to be insincere: “He believes every word he says—as soon as he has said it!” Thus Gilbert had to be most careful what thoughts he allowed into the reality of words even in the privacy of his own head.)
    â€œBy all means—an inspiration, my dear!” he answered. “But now, if you’ll excuse me ...”
    He had much to think over. Whether or not this was true about L.G. and Free Trade the Tories would soon get wind of the rumor—and what then?
    Mary had never been inside that hermitage: only seen it in the distance. But the site though remote seemed so exactly what was wanted; and actually it was only about four miles from the house, an easy bicycle-ride for Mrs. Winter on her afternoons-off. She was so elated she told Mrs. Winter about it that same evening.
    Mrs. Winter was very pleased. She too had never seen the place; but how lovely to have her Nellie at last so near, and be able to share her grief!
23
    Discovery that the dead child had been Mrs. Winter’s famous little niece was not the only shock the inquest had had in store for Augustine. Apparently the deceased had not died of drowning, the police-surgeon said in evidence as soon as the proceedings opened: he had found hardly any water in the lungs and the skull was cracked.
    He went on to testify he had found no medical signs whatever pointing to violence: the child’s skull was abnormally thin: perhaps her head had hit something as she tumbled in, reaching after her toy boat—even a floating branch could have done it. But this ghoulish sawbones had already had an effect on the court that nothing he said later could alter or undo.
    Moreover as it turned out Augustine had found himself sole witness to the finding of the body: his companion Dai Roberts was still untraced.
    In the front row of the public seats sat Mrs. Dai Roberts with her Flemton coven: as he told his story their glittering eyes never for a moment left his face. But the jury seemed unwilling to look at him at all: so long as he was in the box they averted their eyes to the well of the court where the public sat, and their faces were wooden and uneasy.
    The police for their part said they also had found nothing on the spot either that suggested foul play—nothing at all. But when the police-witness protested perhaps over-much how satisfied they were, Mrs. Roberts under the eyes of the jury took out her purse and looked inside it. The sergeant at the door reddened with anger; but there was nothing he could do. Then a juryman asked for Augustine to be recalled, and put a suspicious question to him, in a suspicious voice: “Whyever did you move it, mun?”
    Throughout the still court the questing breathing of those Flemton women could be heard ...
    A scatter of torn frock and a