CHAPTER ONE

THE Botanical Gardens of Winchingham—pronounced by its inhabitants, Wincham—are pleasant and spacious. They boast, besides masses and ranks and marching rows of flowers, shrubs and trees, native and exotic, an archery lawn, a begonia house; a rose garden centred about a sundial and a little blue pond in which dwell fat and languid goldfish; a fernery, a maze, and a children’s playground. There are also several small lily-ponds, cunningly hidden among trees and shrubs, on which ducks and moorhens disport themselves and into which unsuspecting small children are constantly falling, to the vociferous alarm and indignation of the said ducks and moorhens. And there is one large lake in the middle of which is an inaccessible (to the general public) small island that, in shape and content, is an exact replica in miniature of the Gardens themselves, even to that particular lake and island.

Two sides of the Gardens are bordered by a shallow, lazy stream, grandiloquently named the river Winch, on which move small fleets of protected wild ducklings convoyed by incessantly soft-quacking mother ducks; which convoys alter course and turn on bursts of surprising speed at the appearance on the bank of a human being—a phenomenon invariably connected with food by these single-minded creatures. A few majestic swans sail up and down ignoring ducks, ducklings and human beings alike with studied contempt.

On the other side of the river is a domain of trees and tall grass and wild flowers wherein the Home Guard used to carry out complicated ma-noeuvres and stalk mildly interested sheep; and where now the town band plays on fine Sundays to an audience of old men and women, and youths and maidens who have gone there to lie in the long grass by the water’s edge and hold hands. The business area of Winchingham, on the northern side, is fenced off by a long iron railing in which are two massive gates that are locked at sunset. And in a private and sequestered spot hard by the eastern boundary, hidden away behind laurel hedges and approached, from the road, by a yew walk, is the house of the Curator, James McCullough.

James McCullough it was who played his little part in the prelude to the reign of terror that was to fall upon Winchingham and make those pleasant Gardens a place of dreadful mystery where, in the darkness behind those locked gates, evil walked with silent footsteps.

The McCulloughs were comfortable, homely people. James was tall and stooped and grizzled, a silent but likeable Scot with the horticultural sense that seems to be the special gift of a certain type of Scotsman. His wife was a plump, motherly, loquacious person whose domain was the kitchen, where she excelled. There were two daughters, Elsa and Margaret. Elsa was the beauty of the family. She had naturally wavy, red-gold hair, a fair and flawless skin, a superb figure—and a will of her own. She was now in the late twenties, and the reason she had not married before this was an unfortunate attachment some three or four years previously which had, not without bitterness and tears, at length been broken while still in the unofficial engagement period by the continued antagonism shown towards the man—and, in fact, expressed outright—by Mr. and Mrs. McCullough. The fact that shortly after the engagement had been broken off the young man had been arrested on a serious criminal charge and sent to prison for three years seems to indicate some justification for their attitude.

Margaret was a year or two younger than her sister: a brown-haired, sonsy lass, attractive in her own quiet way, comfortably married to a lieutenant in the Navy whom she saw on infrequent occasions and then only for very short periods. The equanimity with which she bore his long absences was probably due in equal parts to her own temperament—she took after her mother there—and the physical fact of James Alexander Ferris, her small son.

Altogether quite an ordinary, not to say commonplace, family. Yet it was against this family, and in particular against the beautiful, self-willed Elsa, for no discernible reason whatsoever, that the terror seemed to be mainly directed.