‘Yes, it is,’ said Tuppence.
‘I thought perhaps you’d lost your way,’ said the friendly witch. ‘People do sometimes.’
‘I just thought,’ said Tuppence, ‘that this was a very attractive looking house when I came down the hill on the other side of the bridge.’
‘That’s the prettiest side,’ said the woman. ‘Artists come and sketch it sometimes – or they used to – once.’
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘I expect they would. I believe I – I saw a picture – at some exhibition,’ she added hurriedly. ‘Some house very like this. Perhaps it was this.’
‘Oh, it may have been. Funny, you know, artists come and do a picture. And then other artists seem to come too. It’s just the same when they have the local picture show every year.
Artists all seem to choose the same spot. I don’t know why. You know, it’s either a bit of meadow and brook, or a partioflar oak tree, or a dump of willows, or it’s the same view of the Norman church. Five or six different pictures of the same thing, most of them pretty bad, I should think. But then I don’t know anything about art. Come in, do.’
‘You’re very kind,’ said Tuppence. ‘You’ve got a very nice garden,’ she added.
‘Oh, it’s not too bad. We’ve got a few flowers and vegetables and things. But my husband can’t do much work nowadays and I’ve got no time with one thing and another.’
‘I saw this house once from the train,’ said Tuppence. ‘The train slowed up and I saw this house and I wondered whether I’d ever see it again. Quite some time ago.’
‘And now suddenly you come down the hill in your car and there it is,’ said the woman. ‘Funny, things happen like that, don’t they?’
‘Thank goodness,’ Tuppence thought, ‘this woman is extraordinarily easy to talk to. One hardly has to imagine anything to explain oneself. One can almost say just what comes into one’s head.’
‘Like to come inside the house?’ said the friendly witch. ‘I can see you’re interested. It’s quite an old house, you know. I mean, late Georgian or something like that, they say, only it’s been added on to. Of course, we’ve only got half the house, you knOW.’ ‘Oh I see,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s divided in two, is that it?’ ‘This is really the back of it,’ said the woman. ‘The front’s the other side, the side you saw from the bridge. It was a funny way to partition it, I should have thought. I’d have thought it would have been easier to do it the other way. You know, right and left, so to speak. Not back and front. This is all really the back.’ ‘Have you lived here long?’ asked Tuppence.
‘Three years. After my husband retired we wanted a little place somewhere in the country where we’d be quiet. Somewhere cheap. This was going cheap because of course it’s very lonely. You’re not near a village or anything.’ ‘I saw a church steeple in the distance.’ ‘Ah, that’s Sutton Chancellor. Two and a half miles from here. We’re in the parish, of course, but there aren’t any houses until you get to the village. It’s a very small village too. You’ll have a cup of tea?’ said the friendly witch. ‘I just put the kettle on not two minutes ago when I looked out and saw you.’ She raised both hands to her mouth and shouted. ‘Amos,’ she shouted, ‘Amos.’ The big man in the distance turned his head.
‘Tea in ten minutes,’ she called.
He acknowledged the signal by raising his hand. She turned, opened the door and motioned Tuppence to go in.
‘Perry, my name is,’ she said in a friendly voice. ‘Alice Perry.’ ‘Mine’s Beresford,’ said Tuppence. ‘Mrs Beresford.’ ‘Come in, Mrs Beresford, and have a look round.’ Tuppence paused for a second. She thought ‘Just for a moment I feel like Hansel and Gretel. The witch asks you into her house. Perhaps it’s a gingerbread house… It ought to be.’ Then she looked at Alice Perry again and thought that it wasn’t the gingerbread house of Hansel and Gretel’s witch.
This was just a perfectly ordinary woman. No, not quite ordinary. She had a rather strange wild friendliness about her. s lis,’ thought Tuppence, ‘but I’m ‘She might be able to do pe sure they’d be good spells.’ She stooped her head a little and stepped over the threshold into the witch’s house.