The Sittaford Mystery - Agatha Christie [3]
Up here, in the tiny village of Sittaford, at all times remote from the world, and now almost completely cut off, the rigours of winter were a very real problem.
Major Burnaby, however, was a hardy soul. He snorted twice, grunted once, and marched resolutely out into the snow.
His destination was not far away. A few paces along a winding lane, then in at a gate, and so up a drive partially swept clear of snow to a house of some considerable size built of granite.
The door was opened by a neatly clad parlourmaid. The Major was divested of his British Warm, his gum boots and his aged scarf.
A door was flung open and he passed through it into a room which conveyed all the illusion of a transformation scene.
Although it was only half past three the curtains had been drawn, the electric lights were on and a huge fire blazed cheerfully on the hearth. Two women in afternoon frocks rose to greet the staunch old warrior.
‘Splendid of you to turn out, Major Burnaby,’ said the elder of the two.
‘Not at all, Mrs Willett, not at all. Very good of you to ask me.’ He shook hands with them both.
‘Mr Garfield is coming,’ went on Mrs Willett, ‘and Mr Duke, and Mr Rycroft said he would come—but one can hardly expect him at his age in such weather. Really, it is too dreadful. One feels one must do something to keep oneself cheerful. Violet, put another log on the fire.’
The Major rose gallantly to perform this task.
‘Allow me, Miss Violet.’
He put the log expertly in the right place and returned once more to the armchair his hostess had indicated. Trying not to appear as though he were doing so, he cast surreptitious glances round the room. Amazing how a couple of women could alter the whole character of a room—and without doing anything very outstanding that you could put your finger on.
Sittaford House had been built ten years ago by Captain Joseph Trevelyan, R.N., on the occasion of his retirement from the Navy. He was a man of substance, and he had always had a great hankering to live on Dartmoor. He had placed his choice on the tiny hamlet of Sittaford. It was not in a valley like most of the villages and farms, but perched right on the shoulder of the moor under the shadow of Sittaford Beacon. He had purchased a large tract of ground, had built a comfortable house with its own electric light plant and an electric pump to save labour in pumping water. Then, as a speculation, he had built six small bungalows, each in its quarter acre of ground, along the lane.
The first of these, the one at his very gates, had been allotted to his old friend and crony, John Burnaby—the others had by degrees been sold, there being still a few people who from choice or necessity like to live right out of the world. The village itself consisted of three picturesque but dilapidated cottages, a forge and a combined post office and sweet shop. The nearest town was Exhampton, six miles away, a steady descent which necessitated the sign, ‘Motorists engage your lowest gear’, so familiar on the Dartmoor roads.
Captain Trevelyan, as has been said, was a man of substance. In spite of this—or perhaps because of it—he was a man who was inordinately fond of money. At the end of October a house agent in Exhampton wrote to him asking if he would consider letting Sittaford House. A tenant had made inquiries concerning it, wishing to rent it for the winter.
Captain Trevelyan’s first impulse was to refuse, his second to demand further information. The tenant in question proved to be a Mrs Willett, a widow with one daughter. She had recently arrived from South Africa and wanted a house on Dartmoor for the winter.
‘Damn it all, the woman must be mad,’ said Captain Trevelyan. ‘Eh, Burnaby, don’t you think so?’
Burnaby did think so, and said so as forcibly as his friend had done.
‘Anyway, you don’t want to let,’ he said. ‘Let the fool woman go somewhere else if she wants to freeze. Coming from South Africa too!’
But at this point Captain Trevelyan’s money complex