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

There was no chronological sequence which occasionally made things difficult. Mrs Copleigh jumped from fifteen years ago to two years ago to last month, and then back to somewhere in the twenties. All this would want a lot of sorting out. And Tuppence wondered whether in the end she would get anything.

The first button she had pressed had not given her any result. That was a mention of Mrs Lancaster.

'I think she came from hereabouts,' said Tuppence, allowing a good deal of vagueness to appear in her voice. 'She had a picture - a very nice picture done by an artist who I believe was known down here.'

'Who did you say now?'

'A Mrs Lancaster.' 'No, I don't remember any Lancasters in these parts.

Lancaster. Lancaster. A genfieman had a car accident, I remember. No, it's the car I'm thinking of. A Lancaster that was. No Mrs Lancaster. It wouldn't be Miss Bolton, would it?

She'd be about seventy now I think. She might have married a Mr Lancaster. She went away and travelled abroad and I do hear she married someone.' 'The picture she gave my aunt was by a Mr Boscobel - I think the name was,' said Tuppence. 'What a lovely jelly.' 'I don't put no apple in it either, like most people do. Makes it jell better, they say, but it takes all the fiavour out.' 'Yes,' said Tuppence. 'I quite agree with you. It does.' 'Who did you say now? It began with a B but I didn't quite catch it.' 'Boscobel, I think.' 'Oh, I remember Mr Boscowan well. Let's see now. That must have been - fifteen years ago it was at least that he came down here. He came several years running, he did. He liked the place. Actually rented a cottage. One of Farmer Hart's cottages it was, that he kept for his labourer. But they built a new one, they did, the Council. Four new cottages specially for labourers.

'Regular artist, Mr B was,' said Mrs Copleigh. 'Funny kind of coat he used to wear. Sort of velvet or corduroy. It used to have holes in the elbows and he wore green and yellow shirts, he did. Oh, very coloufful, he was. I liked his pictures, I did.

He had a showing of them one year. Round about Christmas time it was, I think. No, of course not, it must have been in the summer. He wasn't here in the winter. Yes, very nice. Nothing exciting, if you know what I mean. Just a house with a couple of trees or two cows looking over a fence. But all nice and quiet and pretty colours. Not like some of these young chaps nowadays.' 'Do you have a lot of artists down here?' 'Not really. Oh no, not m speak of. One or two ladies comes down in the summer and does sketching sometimes, but I don't think much of them. We had a young fellow a year ago, called himself an artist. Didn't shave properly. I can't say I liked any of his pictures much. Funny colours all swirled round anyhow.

Nothing you could recognize a bit. Sold a lot of his pictures, he did at that. And they weren't cheap, mind you.'

'Ought to have been five pounds,' said Mr Copleigh entering the conversation for the first time so suddenly that Tuppence jumped.

'What my husband thinks is,' said Mrs Copleigh, resuming her place as interpreter to him. 'He thinks no picture ought to cost more than five pounds. Paints wouldn't cost as much as that. That's what he says, don't you, George?'

'Ah,' said George.

'Mr Boscowan painted a picture of that house by the bridge and the canal - Waterside or Watermead, isn't it called? I came that way today.'

'Oh, you came along that road, did you? It's not much of a road, is it? Very narrow. Lonely that house is, I always think.

I wouldn't like to live in that house. Too lonely. Don't you agree, George?'

George made the noise that expressed faint disagreement and possibly contempt at the cowardice of women.

'That's where Alice Perry lives, that is,' said Mrs Copleigh.

Tuppence abandoned her researches on Mr Boscowan to go along with an opinion on the Perrys. It was, she perceived, always better to go along with Mrs Copleigh who was a jumper from subject to subject.

'Queer couple they are,' said Mrs Copleigh.

George made his agreeing sound.

'Keep themselves to themselves, they do. Don't mingle much, as you'd say. And she goes about looking like nothing on earth, Alice Perry does.'

'Mad,' said Mr Copleigh.

'Well, I don't know as I'd say that. She looks mad all right.

All that scatty hair flying about. And she wears men's coats and great rubber boots most of the time. And she says odd things and doesn't sometimes answer you right when you ask her a question. But I wouldn't say she was mad. Peculiar, that's all.' 'Do people like her?'

'Nobody knows her hardly, although they've been there several years. There's all sorts of tales about her but then, there's always tales.'

'What sort of tales?'

Direct questions were never resented by Mrs Copleigh, who welcomed them as one who was only too eager to answer.

'Calls up spirits, they say, at night. Sitting round a table.

And there's stories of lights moving about the house at night.

· And she reads a lot of clever books, they say. With things drawn in them - circles and stars. If you ask me, it's Amos Perry as is the one that's not quite all right.'

'He's just simple,' said Mr Copleigh indulgently.

'Well, you may be right about that. But there were tales said of him once. Fond of his garden, but doesn't know much.'

'It's only halfa house though, isn't it?' said Tuppence. 'Mrs Perry asked me in very kindly.'

'Did she now? Did she really? I don't know as I'd have liked to go into that house,' said Mrs Copleigh.

'Their part of it's all right,' said Mr Copleigh.

'Isn't the other part all right?' said Tuppence. 'The front part that gives on the canal.'

'Well, there used to be a lot of stories about it. Of course, nobody's lived in it for years. They say there's something queer about it. Lot of stories

told. But when you come down to it, it's not stories.in anybody's memory here. It's all long ago. It was built over a hundred years ago, you know. They say as there was a pretty lady kept there first, built for her, it was, by one of the gentlemen at Court.'

'Queen Victoria's Court?' asked Tuppence with interest.

'I don't think it would be her. She was particular, the old Queen was. No, I'd say it was before that. Time of one of them Georges. This gentlemen, he used to come down and see her and the story goes that they had a quarrel and he cut her throat one night.'

'How terrible!' said Tuppence. 'Did they hang him for it?' 'No. Oh no, there was nothing of that sort. The story is, you see, that he had to get rid of the body and he walled her up in the fireplace.'

'Wailed her up in the fireplace!' 'Some ways they tell it, they say she was a nun, and she had run away from a convent and that's why she had to be wailed up. That's what they do at convents.'