When he arrived at the locked gates and got out of the Mercedes to open them, he saw that the avenue to the house was in darkness. But as he drove past the east wing to park, lights came on and he was greeted at the open front door by the cook, Dean Bostock. He was wearing checked blue trousers and his short white jacket, as was usual when he expected to serve dinner.
He said, “Miss Cressett and Mrs. Frensham went out for dinner, sir. They said to tell you they were visiting some friends in Weymouth. Your room is ready, sir. Mogworthy has lit the fire in the library as well as in the great hall. We thought, being alone, you might prefer to have dinner served there. Shall I bring in the drinks, sir?”
They moved through the great hall. Chandler-Powell tore off his jacket and, opening the library door, threw it and his evening paper on a chair. “Yes. Whisky please, Dean. I’ll have it now.”
“And dinner in half an hour?”
“Yes, that’ll be fine.”
“You won’t be going out before dinner, sir?”
There was a note of anxiety in Dean’s voice. Recognising the cause, Chandler-Powell said, “So what is it you and Kimberley have cooked between you?”
“We thought cheese soufflé, sir, and a beef stroganoff.”
“I see. The first requires me to be sitting waiting for it, and the second is quickly cooked. No, I shan’t be going out, Dean.”
The dinner, as usual, was excellent. He wondered why he should so look forward to his meals when the Manor was at its quietest. During his operating days, when he ate with the medical and nursing staff, he hardly noticed what was on his plate. After dinner he sat and read for half an hour beside the library fire. Then, fetching his jacket and a torch, he went out by the door in the west wing, unlocking and unbolting it, and walked in the star-pricked darkness down the lime avenue to the pale circle of the Cheverell Stones.
A low wall, more landmark than barrier, separated the Manor garden from the stone circle and he hauled himself over without difficulty. As usual after dark, the circle of twelve stones seemed to become paler, more mysterious and more impressive, even to take on a faint gleam from the moonlight or stars. Seen in daylight, they were clumps of ordinary stone, as commonplace as any large boulder seen on a hillside, uneven in size and oddly shaped, their only distinction the highly coloured lichen creeping in the crevices. A note on the door of the hut beside the parking space instructed visitors that the stones were not to be stood on or damaged and explained that the lichen was both old and interesting and should not be touched. To Chandler-Powell, approaching the circle, even the tallest central stone standing as an evil omen in its ring of dead grass induced little emotion. He thought briefly of the long-dead woman bound to this stone in 1654 and burnt alive as a witch. And for what? An over-sharp tongue, delusions, mental eccentricity, to satisfy a private vengeance, the need for a scapegoat in times of sickness or the failure of a harvest, or perhaps as a sacrifice to propitiate a malignant unnamed god? He felt only a vague unfocused pity, not strong enough to cause even a vestige of distress. She was only one of millions who down the ages had been the innocent victims of the ignorance and cruelty of mankind. He saw enough pain in his world. He had no need to stimulate pity.