” I haven’t any silver to cross your palm with.”

” That! It’s just a way to get the money. I wouldn’t do it for money—not for you, Mrs. Pendorric. Now I’m married to Jim Bond, I don’t do it professional like. That went out when I gave up my gipsy ways. “

” Tell me about the time Morwenna was locked in the vault and who did it.”

She didn’t answer, but sat down on the edge of a grave stone, and resting her chin in her hands stared broodingly at the vault.

” The key of the vault was always kept in a cupboard in Mr. Petroc’s study. It was a big key. She’d come down for the holidays.”

“Who?”

” Rachel Bective.”

” How old was she then?”

” I’d say about as old as those twins are now … perhaps a year or so younger. I was always trailing them. I think it was the colour of her hair. Mine was that black and hers was ginger colour. I wanted to keep looking at it. Not that I liked it, mind. I liked Morwenna, though. Miss Morwenna we were told to call her. I never did, though, and she didn’t mind.

“She was like Roc—they never minded things like that. But she did, that ginger one. She’d say to me: You’ll call me Miss Rachel or I’ll know the reason why.” Miss Rachel! Who did she think she was? “

” Tell me how Morwenna came to be in the vault.”

” I was always in the churchyard. I used to come here to play among the tombstones; and one day I saw them together and I hid and listened to them talking. After that I just wanted to watch them and listen to them some more, so I was often where they were, when they didn’t know it. I knew they’d be at the vault, because I’d heard about it the day before when they were in the graveyard reading the inscriptions.

Morwenna told Rachel that’s what she used to do with her brother, and that made Rachel want to do it, for she did always want to do everything they did. She wanted to be one of them and she couldn’t . she couldn’t ever be . no more than she can now. Oh, she be educated, I do know . but I’d be as good as her if I’d had the schooling. “

” What has she done to you, that you hate her so much?”

” Tain’t what she’s done to me. Her wouldn’t deign to give much thought to the likes of I, Mrs. Pendorric. It’s what she’d do to others.”

” You were telling me.”

“So I were.” She held her hands in front of her, as though she were reading her own fortune. Then she went on:

” I heard ‘em talking. She wanted Morwenna to get this key so that they could have a look at the vault, and Morwenna didn’t want to. You see, it was in her father’s study. He was away at the time—he were often away after the accident—and she said to Morwenna:

‘ You’ll be sorry if you don’t. ” I was up in a tree and they couldn’t see me, but I knew that Morwenna would get the key because she knew she would really be sorry if she didn’t. Then I heard they were coming there next afternoon, so I were there too.”

” So Morwenna did get the key.”

Dinah nodded. ” I was here in the graveyard next day when they came, and they had the key. Rachel Bective opened the door of the vault and they went in, though Morwenna didn’t want to much, but Rachel was saying: You’ve got to. You’ll be sorry if you don’t,” and Morwenna was saying: “I can’t. Not again.” Then all of a sudden Rachel laughed and ran out of the vault, slamming the door after her. Then she locked it and Morwenna was shut in. “

” It must have been a horrible experience. I hope she didn’t stay there long.”

Dinah shook her head. ” No. There’s a little grating in the vault and Rachel was soon at that. She kept calling out: ” I won’t let you out till you say you’ll ask me for Christmas. I’ll go back and I’ll tell them I don’t know where you are. Nobody’ll think you’re in here because I’ll take the key back and put it where it belongs . and it’ll be weeks before they find you, then you’ll be a skeleton like the bride in “The Mistletoe Bough ” ” So Morwenna said she would do what she wanted and Rachel opened the door. I never forgot that, and I don’t never pass this spot without thinking on it and how poor Morwenna had to say she would do what it was Rachel wanted, and how pleased Rachel looked in her sly way.”

” She was only a child, I suppose, and she must have longed to come to Pendorric for holidays.”

” And you reckon that excuses her … doing a thing like that!”

” It was a childish trick….”

” Oh, no ‘tweren’t. She’d have left her there if Morwenna hadn’t given way.”

” I’m sure she wouldn’t.”

Dinah looked at me scornfully. ” I’m beginning to read your fortune, Mrs. Pendorric, without so much as a look at your hand. You’re one of them that says: Oh no, it bain’t that way … just when you don’t want it to be. Your sort has to beware.”

” You’re quite wrong. I assure you I face facts when I know they’re there to be faced.”

” Ay, but it’s knowing they’re there that’s important, don’ tee think, Mrs. Pendorric? I’ll tell ‘ee this: There’s people that don’t change much all through their lives. You can’t tell ‘tis so till you’ve proved like … but it don’t do no harm to be on your guard.

Oh, I do know a lot about Pendorrics . living close you might say, all of me born natural life. “

” I expect there’s always been a great deal of gossip about the family.”

” There was at the time, and though I was yet to be born, they were still talking of it when I were a little ‘un. My mother was a sharp one. Nothing much she missed. I remember hearing her talk of Louisa Sellick, the one he were sweet on before he married Miss Barbarina.”

“Louisa Sellick?” I repeated, for I had never heard that name mentioned before.

” Oh, ‘tis an old story and all happened long ago. Ain’t no sense in reviving it like … ‘cept of course, you be the next Bride.” I went over to Dinah, and looking down at her said earnestly : ” I sometimes get the impression that you’re trying to warn me about something.”

She threw back her hair and laughed up at me. ” That’s because I want to tell your fortune. They say The gipsy warned me,” don’t ‘em? Tis a kind of joke. “

” What do you know of Louisa Sellick?”

” Only what my mother told me. Sometimes I’ve been out that way … where she do live now, and I’ve seen her. But that was after he were dead like … so it weren’t the same. They say he used to go out to visit her and that Barbarina Pendorric killed herself because she couldn’t endure it no more … him liking Louisa better than her.

She’d thought when she first married that it was all over; that were when Louisa went out to live on the moor. “

” And is Louisa still living there?”

Dinah nodded. ” Well, least she were when I were last that way. Tis Bedivere House—a sizeable place. He bought it for her. Twas their love nest, you might say. And when he rode out on his business he’d land up at Bedivere. Perhaps there’d be mist on the moors or he was too busy to get back to Pendorric … see what I mean? But it was found out that she were there … and then things happened.”

” Do you often go out that way?”

” Not now. I got a home of me own now, remember. I married Jim Bond, didn’t I? I sleep on a goose-feather bed and there’s four walls all round me. But when I go out that way … Rozmary Pool and Jamaica Inn way … I see the house and I look for Louisa. She ain’t so young and pretty now … but we none of us stay that way for ever, do us?”

I remembered suddenly that listening to Dinah’s conversation I had stayed out longer than I had intended to. I looked at my watch. ” I’d no idea it was so late,” I said.

She smiled lazily. ” You’d better get back, Mrs. Pendorric. Time don’t matter to me, but I know it does to the likes of you. Some folks rush about like they thought they hadn’t got much time left. Perhaps they’re right. Who’s to say?”

She was smiling her mocking enigmatic smile.

” Goodbye,” I said, and started to pick my way through the gravestones to the lych gate.

My interest in Barbarina grew as each day passed. I went often to that room of hers and thought about her. I wondered if she had been of a passionate and jealous nature. She must have been terribly unhappy if, as Dinah had suggested, her husband had paid periodic visits to that woman on the moor.

I had heard no more violin-playing, nor singing in that strange off-key voice. Whoever had been responsible for that had evidently decided to give it a rest, and I was only faintly disconcerted because I had failed to discover who was playing the part of the ghostly musician. But I did want to know more of Barbarina. Deborah was always willing to talk about her, and in fact obviously delighted in doing so. She was gradually building up the picture of her sister in my mind; sometimes she would even describe the dresses they had worn for certain parties, and so vividly did she talk that it was as though Barbarina materialised before my eyes. Since my talk with Dinah the picture had become even clearer, and I knew that one day soon my curiosity would be too much for me and I should have to go out on the moor to see if I could catch a glimpse of Louisa Sellick for myself.

I had not made any excursions alone by car so far, and I couldn’t very well ask Roc to take me there, nor Morwenna. I had an uneasy feeling that I’d do better to leave the past alone, and yet, because I could not suppress a feeling that I ought to know, I seemed unable to stop.

Dinah’s veiled warnings didn’t help me to leave the subject alone, either.

There were three small cars in the garage besides Roc’s Daimler and Charles’s Land-Rover; Morwenna used one of them and I had been told that the others were for general use.