The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs by James P. Blaylock

place for birds.”
    “Quite right,” Uncle Gilbert said. “There’s a sort of cow path that winds around from East Dean. First rate birding on the South Downs and along the cliffs. Eagle owls, long ears, whooper swans, merlin. A blind man could see two-dozen varieties in a day with half an eye open. Captain Sawney kept a log, pages and pages of observations. God knows what came of it. Used to wrap fish, probably.”
    “There’s a new keeper, then?” Hasbro asked.
    “Some three months or more. I’ve been down that way twice now that the weather’s warmed up, taking a turn on the Downs with the binocle, but the new man won’t come down. Captain Sawney always liked a chat. It gave him a chance for a whet, you see. Didn’t matter what time of day. He’d bring the bottle and two glasses down with him. I’d sometimes haul along a fresh bottle myself and leave it with him in order to buy my round. If there was weather, I’d go up for the view. Many’s the time we watched ships beating up the Channel in a storm. He always wanted to know what I’d seen in the birding line, and if there was anything new. He was fond of owls….”
    His voice fell, and he saw something in our faces now. “They murdered him?” he asked after a silent moment. “He didn’t fall? He was pushed ?”
    “Quite likely,” Alice said. “I’m sorry.”
    “Then this new man…he’s in league with your Dr. Narbondo? They put their own man in?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but nodded darkly. He looked at his hands, opening and closing them. “It’s late,” he said, all the vigor gone out of his voice. “I want some rest. I suggest that we lay things out in the morning. I’ve an idea of how we might come at them.” He nodded decisively. “We’ll learn ‘em,” he said. “See if we don’t.”
    The pheasant had been reduced to a skeleton, the wine drank, and the cheese and bread lay in a general ruin. Uncle Gilbert was quite right. There was nothing left to be said that would do us half so much good as a few hours of restorative sleep. As I rose from the table I wondered what “come at them” might mean, and what Uncle Gilbert intended to learn them.



Chapter 10
     
    Go On 
    or Go Back

     
    Morning found us on the Downs, or at least it found three of us there, Alice, Hasbro, and I, hidden in the shrubbery that covered the hilltop just west of the light, eating sandwiches out of a basket put up by Barlow and drinking tea out of an ingenious traveling teapot. There was the twitter of birds and the morning sun through the leaves, and away off shore a schooner ghosted along, appearing and disappearing through a rising sea mist.
    I watched the lighthouse through a pair of Uncle Gilbert’s birding glasses. Five minutes ago a heavy, large man, most likely the keeper, had stepped out onto the encircling balcony carrying a telescope to take a look over the Downs as if he anticipated someone’s arrival. There was smoke rising from the chimney of the attached cottage, and a light beyond the window—someone else waiting inside, perhaps. Maybe several someones, unless the keeper kept lamps burning even while he was out. He had lamp oil to spare, certainly.
    White mist drifted through on the breeze off the Channel, obscuring the lighthouse and the edge of the cliffs now. When it cleared, Tubby and Uncle Gilbert appeared, coming along the path from the direction of Eastbourne like Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. Tubby used his blackthorn as a walking stick and Uncle Gilbert leaned on what I knew to be a sword cane, and not one of the cheap varieties made for show. This one had an edge on it and a certain amount of heft. Both men wore walking togs and carried birding glasses, the very image of well fed amateur naturalists taking advantage of the morning quiet. Uncle Gilbert stopped in his tracks, pointed skyward, clapped his glasses to his eyes, and watched a falcon turning in a great circle, drifting away northward. Tubby wrote what