“But of course it will,” I replied with conviction.

“Of course. The cider is good, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

“The West Country is famous for it, you know—Devon and Cornwall.”

“So I have heard.”

“You did tell me last time we met that you had left school last summer. Shall you stay at home or take up some career?”

“Because of my sister’s sudden marriage, I have not thought of anything but that. Until the baby is born I think we shall be quite preoccupied with that.”

“And you will be here often, so that we shall be neighbors. I am sure they are very happy at Tregarland’s about the child.”

“Oh, yes, they are.”

“It will be a comfort…after what happened.”

“You must be referring to Dermot’s first wife. I think he is very happy now. That other is all in the past.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I suppose people round here know all about his first marriage.”

He lifted his shoulders as though to imply what did I expect.

“Did you know her?”

“Not personally. I had seen her around. She lived with her mother in one of the cottages right on the cliff looking down on West Poldown. One saw her around quite a bit. She worked at the Sailor’s Rest.”

“The Sailor’s Rest? Isn’t that the inn on the west side overlooking the river mouth?”

“That’s it.” He grinned at me. “Something of a mésalliance, I fear.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Shock waves ran round the place when they married. I can’t imagine old Mr. Tregarland was very pleased with the choice of his son and heir. People liked her. Annette, she was…Annette Pardell. Mrs. Pardell still lives in…er…Cliff Cottage, I think it is called. She never got over it. She’s a widow and Annette was her only child. You didn’t know this?”

“No, not the details. Dorabella told me that Dermot had been married before and that his first wife had died. She had drowned when bathing.”

“Annette was a great one for the sea. They say she was in it every day during the summer. A big, strong girl, the last you’d think to go that way. She’d been swimming since she was a child. They came down here from the North of England—Yorkshire, I think. I gathered Mrs. Pardell had some sort of pension, enough to get by. She rented Cliff Cottage and has been there ever since she came to Cornwall. Annette was a fine-looking girl. Mrs. Pardell had plans for her and was not too pleased when she landed up in the bar. She was an excellent barmaid, bright and saucy. You know the sort. She got on well with the men customers, and the women liked her, too. There was talk when she married the son of the big house, as you can imagine—and then she died like that.”

“Was Dermot very upset?”

He was silent for a while.

“I don’t know,” he said at length. “But I don’t think it had been very good at the house. You know how it is. Annette did not really fit in. And there was the baby…”

“What baby?”

“Oh…she was going to have a baby. That was why she shouldn’t have gone swimming. She was not in a fit state to do so. It was foolish of her. There was no one about apparently. It was early morning. She’d always liked a swim first thing in the morning. The temptation must have been too strong for her. Of course, in her condition, she should have known better. She went down to that beach below the Tregarland gardens and went in from there. Her body was washed up a week or so later. There was mystery for a few days, but her bathrobe and slippers were there on the beach to indicate what had happened.”

“What a terrible tragedy! And the baby…”

“I reckon they are overjoyed now that there is another little one on the way.”

“Oh, yes. They are thrilled, of course.”

“I understand that. And I am delighted because it means that you will be down here often, and you and I can have a little rendezvous. You can’t invite me to Tregarland. I am wondering whether I can ask you to my place. This is the first time that stupid feud has been a nuisance.”

“Tell me about yourself,” I said.

He lifted his shoulders. “What do you want to know?”

“You love your estate. I believe Jermyn Priory has been in your family for years.”

“Yes. It was a priory in the fourteenth century. In the sixteenth it was destroyed with countless others and later the house was built using some of the stone from the desecrated priory. My family came here at that time and we have been here ever since. My father was a younger son, and I did not inherit the place until two years ago. I have an excellent manager. We get on well together and he lives in a house close to the Priory. He has an efficient wife who has taken upon herself to see that I lack nothing. I have a good housekeeper and am surrounded by excellent people, so I am well cosseted. There! You couldn’t get better than that from Mrs. Brodie.”

“You seem to be well satisfied with life.”

“Up to a point. I often go to London and now and then travel on the Continent. I should like to see more of my neighbors, but it is surprising how this stupid feud gets in the way. It’s ridiculous after all these years. But there it is.”

“Perhaps if you made a few advances…?”

“I did try once and was refused. The Tregarlands are not very sociable, you know. The old man is a bit of an enigma and he is the head of it. He lives rather like a recluse now, but he had quite a reputation in the past. He was once a very merry gentleman—very fond of the ladies—traveling around, living riotously. Dances, card parties, and then suddenly he became ill. It was the gout, I believe, which incapacitated him somewhat. He married in his forties, but he didn’t really settle down then until the gout grew worse. His wife died a few years after Dermot was born, and then Mrs. Lewyth and her little boy came to live there. She looks after him very well, I believe. There’s a rumour that she is a distant relation—a poor one—but no one seems quite certain of that.”

“I am not sure, either.”

“Well, he has become much more sober since then. Enforced, of course. But all that was years ago.”

He looked at my empty tankard.

“Would you like another?” he asked.

“No, thanks.”

“I see you are a wise young woman. It is rather potent.”

“Yes, it certainly is.”

“You’ll get used to it in time.” He smiled at me. “As we can’t invite each other to our houses, we shall have to have a meeting place. Not too often here.” He raised his eyebrows. “For obvious reasons, we do not want to figure too often in the news bulletins. We will go somewhere else. There are some interesting places around here.”

“I daresay I shall be going home soon.”

“We must meet before you do and make arrangements for your next descent upon us.”

I felt very pleased that he had suggested this, and we arranged to meet two days later in the field where I had fallen and we would go out to the Horned Stag, which was a little way out on the moor.

We parted at the boundary and I rode back to Tregarland’s exhilarated by the encounter, but I could not stop thinking of Annette who was to have had Dermot’s child and had, one morning, foolishly gone swimming in the sea.

Next morning I could not resist going along to have a look at Cliff Cottage, There it was, as Jowan Jermyn had described it, set on the west cliff, looking down on the town. It was very neat, with white net curtains at the windows and a front garden which was clearly very well tended.

I lingered and a woman came out of the cottage. I had a notion that she had seen me through the lace curtains.

She did not speak; she had a somewhat dour expression—one might say bellicose almost, as though she were warning me to keep away.

“Good morning,” I said pleasantly.

She nodded acknowledgment of the greeting and somehow managed to imply that, as far as she was concerned, that was the end of the encounter.

I was disappointed. I had hoped she would be like so many of the people hereabouts, eager for a little chat.

I said: “I was admiring your garden.”

I had hit on the right note, for her expression softened ever so slightly. I had guessed she was devoted to her garden. I pressed home my advantage.

“How do you manage to get these lovely things to grow here? It must be difficult, for you would get the full force of the wind, I imagine.”

“Aye,” she said grudgingly. “The wind’s a problem.”

“It must be hard work, and, of course, you have to choose what will thrive.”

“You a gardener?” she asked. Her voice was quite different from the soft Cornish accent which I had been hearing all around me. I remembered that Jowan Jermyn had said she came from the North.

“Not an expert one,” I said, falsely lying by implication, for I was no gardener at all. “But it is a fascinating hobby.”

“You’re right. Gets a hold of you.”

“Those firs…they are…?”

“Lawson’s cypress. Make a good hedge. The rate they grow, too!” She was definitely relenting. “They came through the post in an envelope…just a little packet, a bunch of sprigs. Now look at them.”

“Miraculous,” I said, gazing rapturously at them.

“They grow stubby…not tall, then they stand up to the wind. That’s something you have to think about in this place.”

I knew that it would be fatal to try to take the subject away from the garden.

She volunteered: “Climate here is soft and damp. Plants here are four weeks in advance of those in the North.”

“Is that so? What healthy-looking plants those are. What are they?”

She looked shocked because I did not know something so commonplace.

“Hydrangeas, of course. Grow like wildfire here because of the damp. This is going to be a good year for the roses.”