Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes

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      Chapter I

       Table of Contents

      “There! I think that will about do. No! stay. The tail of that "M" is not quite right, and I will make it all a bit deeper while I am about it. Our initials must last as long as anybody’s, eh, Minnie?”

      The girl blushed and smiled as she glanced at the tall, well-set-up figure.

      “I think they look beautiful,” she said shyly, as after putting a few finishing touches the man stepped back to her side and surveyed his handiwork with pride: J.G. and M.S.

      “May it soon be M.G.” he said as he slipped his arm round her waist. “What a lot of initials there are! The old tree will soon be full.”

      “All the lovers that have been in Lockford for years have carved their initials there,” the girl observed, looking up at the wide, hoary trunk. “See here, Jim, these new ones G.D. and M.H. that will be Mr. Garth Davenant and Miss Mavis.”

      “Then it is all right that Miss Mavis’s maid should be the next,” the man responded, implanting a kiss upon her half-averted cheek. “Never mind, Minnie”, with a careless laugh, “there’s nobody here to see!”

      “How you do go on!” said Minnie, releasing herself and turning her hot cheeks away. “I have to be back at six to dress Miss Mavis for this dinner at Davenant Court, and we haven’t drunk the water at the Wishing Well yet.”

      “That is the next thing, is it?” the man said absently. He was gazing intently up at the grand old oak, under the wide-spreading branches of which they were standing. “Minnie, I believe that is a grey crow’s nest up there! Wait a minute, I must have an egg if it is. This old fellow won’t be difficult to climb, I fancy.”

      “Oh, Jim, Jim! Indeed you mustn’t!” the girl began. But her protest went unheeded. He had already thrown off his coat and was climbing up the tree before the words had left her mouth, and she could only watch his ascent in a sort of terrified fascination.

      Half-way up, however, he halted with, as it seemed to her, a sharp exclamation, then after a moment’s pause he turned and began his downward journey.

      “It wasn’t a crow’s after all!” he said as he slid rapidly to the ground. “It was nothing but some old rubbish, and the game wasn’t worth the candle.”

      “It will bring us bad luck, though,” Minnie wailed. “Whatever made you climb the Lovers’ Oak, Jim? It shows right well you are a foreigner. If you’d been a Devonshire man you wouldn’t have tried it on, not for twenty nests.”

      Her lips were quivering, big tears were standing in her eyes. The man glanced at her with some compunction; quite evidently the ill-luck of which she spoke, and which his hasty action had braved, was a very real thing to her.

      “Cheer up, Minnie!” he said with a rough attempt at consolation. “I promise you I will let the Lovers’ Oak alone in the future. And come along now, I’ll drink gallons of water at the Wishing Well to make up!”

      “It is dreadfully unlucky”, Minnie sighed, “but maybe it’ll be taken into account that you are a foreigner. Now the Wishing Well, do be careful there, Jim.”

      “I won’t move a step till you give me leave,” he assured her as they turned aside down a narrow rugged path and picked their way over stones worn smooth by the feet of countless lovers. “You wish while you drink, that’s it, isn’t it, Minnie?”

      “Yes. They say in olden times a man who went out to the wars, Crusades they called them then, was wounded and reported dead. When after long years he made his way back to Lockford he found his wife, believing him dead, had married again. So for love of her he would claim neither title nor estate lest he should shame her, but made himself a hut here under the oak so that, all unknown, he could watch over her. They called him the hermit of Lockford, and only when he died was it found out who he really was.”

      “Umph! I fancy I have heard something like that before,” said Jim slowly.

      Minnie was too much in earnest to heed the scepticism in his tone.

      “He lived on berries and things from the woods, and he got his drink from the Wishing Well. See”—as they came in sight of the clear, limpid water, with tiny, wild maidenhair-fern growing in every niche and cranny of the old grey rock above it—“this was his cup,” picking up a curious-looking hollowed stone that stood on the wide ledge beside, “so they say, but Miss Mavis doesn’t believe it; she says she’s sure it can’t be so old.”

      The man took it from her and looked at it.

      “Um! СКАЧАТЬ