“Cranky Frenchwomen. I’ve seen them on previous visits,” answered Aire. “They always gave me the impression of being a couple of—well, I might say unfrocked nuns, if you understand.”
“Sounds rather ambiguous, Doctor,” I remarked.
I was suddenly put in mind of a tale I had heard in another spot of demon-haunted Wales, and I told it with some gusto. There two sisters had lived together and managed a small farm with the aid of one man. They were unfamiliar people and the country-folk were turned askance to them. The pair would vanish at a particular time of day, and their hats would be hanging in their bedrooms upon the looking-glass. One afternoon the farmhand hid under their bed to find out their secret. He saw them take off their caps and hang them on the glass, whereupon they themselves immediately turned to cats, and ran to the dairy and began lapping the cream.
A somewhat dubious look upon Aire’s face as he gazed at Maryvale during my recital was, I fear, lost on me, for it gave me a thrilling pleasure to apply this tale to the sisters Delambre, particularly since in that grimalkin of appalling voice they had a fit companion for many an impious Sabbath.
“And by the way,” I concluded, “the beast spared us its caterwauling last night.”
“Last night, but not to-night,” said Maryvale. “It will be hungrier than ever to-night. We shall hear it, unless—”
“Unless what?”
“We shall see,” he parried.
“It’s a vicious beast, if ever there was one,” said Aire, looking in one of the cottage windows. “It’s twice the size you’d believe it could attain. There’s never been any other cat in the Vale whose nine lives were worth sixpence when this animal discovered its presence.”
“And the birds,” added Maryvale. “The nightingales that once loved this valley so—scarcely one is left.”