By the Pricking of My Thumbs (Tommy & Tuppence 4)

'Oh, it may have been. Funny, you know, artists come and do a picture. And then other artists seem to come too. It's just the same when they have the local picture show every year.

Artists all seem to choose the same spot. I don't know why. You know, it's either a bit of meadow and brook, or a partioflar oak tree, or a dump of willows, or it's the same view of the Norman church. Five or six different pictures of the same thing, most of them pretty bad, I should think. But then I don't know anything about art. Come in, do.'

'You're very kind,' said Tuppence. 'You've got a very nice garden,' she added.

'Oh, it's not too bad. We've got a few flowers and vegetables and things. But my husband can't do much work nowadays and I've got no time with one thing and another.'

'I saw this house once from the train,' said Tuppence. 'The train slowed up and I saw this house and I wondered whether I'd ever see it again. Quite some time ago.'

'And now suddenly you come down the hill in your car and there it is,' said the woman. 'Funny, things happen like that, don't they?'

'Thank goodness,' Tuppence thought, 'this woman is extraordinarily easy to talk to. One hardly has to imagine anything to explain oneself. One can almost say just what comes into one's head.'

'Like to come inside the house?' said the friendly witch. 'I can see you're interested. It's quite an old house, you know. I mean, late Georgian or something like that, they say, only it's been added on to. Of course, we've only got half the house, you knOW.' 'Oh I see,' said Tuppence. 'It's divided in two, is that it?' 'This is really the back of it,' said the woman. 'The front's the other side, the side you saw from the bridge. It was a funny way to partition it, I should have thought. I'd have thought it would have been easier to do it the other way. You know, right and left, so to speak. Not back and front. This is all really the back.' 'Have you lived here long?' asked Tuppence.

'Three years. After my husband retired we wanted a little place somewhere in the country where we'd be quiet. Somewhere cheap. This was going cheap because of course it's very lonely. You're not near a village or anything.' 'I saw a church steeple in the distance.' 'Ah, that's Sutton Chancellor. Two and a half miles from here. We're in the parish, of course, but there aren't any houses until you get to the village. It's a very small village too. You'll have a cup of tea?' said the friendly witch. 'I just put the kettle on not two minutes ago when I looked out and saw you.' She raised both hands to her mouth and shouted. 'Amos,' she shouted, 'Amos.' The big man in the distance turned his head.

'Tea in ten minutes,' she called.

He acknowledged the signal by raising his hand. She turned, opened the door and motioned Tuppence to go in.

'Perry, my name is,' she said in a friendly voice. 'Alice Perry.' 'Mine's Beresford,' said Tuppence. 'Mrs Beresford.' 'Come in, Mrs Beresford, and have a look round.' Tuppence paused for a second. She thought 'Just for a moment I feel like Hansel and Gretel. The witch asks you into her house. Perhaps it's a gingerbread house... It ought to be.' Then she looked at Alice Perry again and thought that it wasn't the gingerbread house of Hansel and Gretel's witch.

This was just a perfectly ordinary woman. No, not quite ordinary. She had a rather strange wild friendliness about her. s lis,' thought Tuppence, 'but I'm 'She might be able to do pe sure they'd be good spells.' She stooped her head a little and stepped over the threshold into the witch's house.

It was rather dark inside. The passages were small. Mrs Perry led her through a kitchen and into a sitting-room beyond it which was evidently the family living-room. There was nothing exciting about the house. It was, Tuppence thought, probably a late Victorian addition to the main part. Horizon-tally it was narrow. It seemed to consist ora horizontal passage, rather dark, which served a string of rooms. She thought to herself that it certainly was rather an odd way of dividing a house.

'Sit down and I'll bring the tea in,' said Mrs Perry.

'Let me help you.'

'Oh, don't worry, I shan't be a minute. It's all ready on the tray.'

A whisfie rose from the kitchen. The kettle had evidently reached the end of its span of tranquillity. Mrs Perry went out and returned in a minute or two with the tea tray., a plate of scones, a jar of jam and three cups and saucers.

'I expect you're disappointed, now you've got inside,' said Mrs Perry.

It was a shrewd remark and very near to the truth.

'Oh no,' said Tuppence.

'Well, I should be if I was you. Because they don't match a bit, do they? I mean the front and the back side of the house don't match. But it is a comfortable house to live in. Not many rooms, not too much light but it makes a great difference in price.'

'Who divided the house and why?'

'Oh, a good many years ago, I believe. I suppose whoever had it thought it was too big or too inconvenient. Only wanted a weekend place or something of that kind. So they kept the good rooms, the dining-room and the drawing-room and made a kitchen out of a small study there was, and a couple of bedrooms and bathroom upstairs, and then wailed it up and let the part that was kitchens and old-fashioned sculleries and things, and did it up a bit.'

'Who lives in the other part? Someone who just comes down for weekends?'

'Nobody lives there now,' said Mrs Perry. 'Have another scone, dear.'

'Thank you,' said Tuppence.

'At least nobody's come down here in the last two years. I don't know even who it belongs to now.' '

'But when you fLrst came here?'

'There was a young lady used to come down here - an actress they said she was. At least that's what we heard. But we never saw her really. Just caught a glimpse sometimes. She used to come down late on a Saturday night after the show, I suppose.

She used to go away on the Sunday evenings.'

'Quite a mystery woman,' said Tuppence, encouragingly.

'You know that's just the way I used to think of her. I used to make up stories about her in my head. Sometimes I'd think she was like Greta Garbo. You know, the way she went about always in dark glasses and pulled-down hats. Goodness now, I've got my peak hat on.'

She removed the witch's' headgear from her head and laughed.

'It's for a play we're having at the parish rooms in Sutton Chancellor,' she said. 'You know - a sort of fairy story play for the children mostly. I'm playing the witch,' she added.

'Oh,' said Tuppence, slightly taken aback, then added quickly, 'What fun.'

'Yes, it is fun, isn't it?' said Mrs Perry. 'Just right for the witch, aren't I?' She laughed and tapped her chin. 'You know.

I've got the face for it. Hope it won't put ideas into people's heads. They'll think I've got the evil eye.'

'I don't think they'd think that of you,' said Tuppence. 'I'm sure you'd be a beneficent witch.'

'Well, I'm glad you think so,' said Mrs Perry. 'As I was saying, this actress - I can't remember her name now - Miss Marchment I think it was, but it might have been something else - you wouldn't believe the things I used to make up about her. Really, I suppose, I hardly ever saw or spoke to her.

Sometimes I think she was just terribly shy and neurotic. Reporters'd come down after her and things like that, but she never would see them. At other times I used to think - well, you'll say I'm foolish - I used to think quite sinister things about her. You know, that she was afraid of being recognized. Perhaps she wasn't an actress at all. Perhaps the police were looking for her. Perhaps she was a criminal of some kind. It's exciting sometimes, making rhlnL,S up in your head. Especially when you don't - well - see many people.' 'Did nobody ever come down here with her?' 'Well, I'm not so sure about that. Of course these partition walls, you know, that they put in when they turned the house into two, well, they're pretty thin and sometimes you'd hear voices and things like that. I think she did bring down someone for weekends occasionally.' She nodded her head. 'A man of some kind. That may have been why they wanted somewhere quiet like this.' 'A married man,' said Tuppence, entering into the spirit of make-believe.

'Yes, it would be a married man, wouldn't it?' said Mrs Perry.

'Perhaps it was her husband who came down With her. He'd taken this place in the country because he wanted to murder her and perhaps he buried her in the garden.' 'My!' said Mrs Perry. 'You do have an imagination, don't you? I never thought of that one.' 'I suppose someone must have known all about her,' said Tuppence. 'I mean house agents. People like that.' 'Oh, I suppose so,' said Mrs Perry. 'But I rather liked not knowing, if you understand what I mean.' 'Oh yes,' said Tuppence, 'I do understand.' 'It's got an atmosphere, you know, this house. I mean there's a feeling in it, a feeling that anything might have happened.' 'Didn't she have any people come in to clean for her or anything like that?' 'Difficult to get anyone here. There's nobody near at hand.' The outside door opened. The big man who had been digging in the garden came in. He went to the scullery tap and turned it, obviously washing his hands. Then he came through into the sitting-room.

'This is my husband,' said Mrs Perry. 'Amos. We've got a visitor, Amos. This is Mis Beresford.' 'How do you do?' said Tuppence.

Amos Perry was a tall, shambling-looking man. He was bigger and more powerful than Tuppence had realized.

Although he had a shambling gait and walked slowly, he was a big man of muscular build. He said, 'Pleased to meet you, Mrs Beresford.' His voice was pleasant and he smiled, but Tuppence wondered for a brief moment whether he was really what she would have called 'all there'. There was a kind of wondering simplicity about the look in his eyes and she wondered, too, whether Mrs Perry had wanted a quiet place to live in because of some mental disability on the part of her husband.

'Ever so fond of the garden, he is,' said Mrs Perry.