‘More fool you for believing him.’
‘Look, I’m terribly sorry about his death. How did it happen?’
She pointed the stick at the lean-to beside the cottage. ‘He was cleaning the shotgun.’ Her eyes focused on Rory’s face.
‘So it was an accident?’
The muscles around her mouth twitched. ‘What were you up to with him, mister?’
‘Have you heard of a lady called Miss Penhow?’
‘Of course I have. Mrs Serridge. So-called.’
‘Like your husband, I wanted to find out what had happened to her.’
‘Why?’
‘Her niece is a friend of mine. It was on her behalf.’
‘After the money, are you?’ It was not really a question.
‘No. I-’ Rory broke off and started again. ‘We want to be sure she’s all right.’
‘I can’t help you.’
For a moment they stood there separated by a couple of yards of nettles and long grass. Mrs Narton was so pale that she looked like a ghost, not a person of flesh and blood.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Rory said again. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help, will you let me know?’
She stared at him, saying nothing, and he realized the futility of what he had said. Nevertheless he opened his coat and took out a propelling pencil and his notebook. He wrote
A thought occurred to him. ‘What happened to his notebook?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It wasn’t found?’
‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Just go away.’
He nodded. As he was leaving, he glanced at the bonfire. There was a child’s book on it, he noticed, the remains of a pink eiderdown and what looked like a doll. There was also a fragment of charred cardboard that might have come from the cover of a small, black notebook.
It was after one o’clock by the time Rory reached the gates of the Vicarage. Mr Gladwyn’s Ford 8 was standing outside the front door. He would be at lunch now. Narton had said you could set your watch by Mr Gladwyn.
Rory didn’t mind the delay. He wanted time to think. If Narton had no longer been a police officer, then what the hell had he been doing? The only answer that seemed to make sense was that he had been pursuing a vendetta against Serridge.
He went into the saloon bar of the Alforde Arms and ordered beer, ham and eggs. Narton had not mentioned that he lived so near Morthams Farm, claiming that he had not considered it relevant. But if some sort of private feud, not an official investigation, was the reason behind his interest in Serridge, that might have been another reason to keep quiet about where he lived, in case it suggested to Rory the possibility of a personal connection between the two men.
It was almost two o’clock by the time he finished his meal and paid the bill. Outside, a small, untidy boy with a flabby mouth was sitting on the edge of the horse trough in the yard. He glanced at Rory and then away, continuing to whittle a stick with a penknife. He seemed faintly familiar. Was it the boy he had glimpsed near Morthams Farm? But the world was full of small boys.
It still seemed a little early to call on the Vicar. Rory spent ten minutes in the church, which was small and dark. It had been carefully restored by yet another Alforde in 1876-8 and made even gloomier than it need have been with pitch-pine panelling and pews. He worked his way round the walls, reading the memorial tablets. The Alfordes went back to the middle of the eighteenth century. The most recent in the sequence was Constance Mary Alforde, widow of Henry Locksley Alforde. She had died a few months after her husband, in 1929. ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’
He walked slowly through the churchyard, glancing at the graves on either side, in the direction of the Vicarage. This brought him to the section where the newer graves were. For the second time that day the name Narton caught his eye. It was on a neat new stone marker beside a yew tree. For an instant his mind grappled with the impossible: surely Narton wasn’t dead and buried already? Then his mind caught up with what he was seeing, with the smooth green mound and the rest of the inscription on the marker:
AMY CONSTANCE
BELOVED DAUGHTER OF MARGARET AND HERBERT NARTON
1915–1931
“WHOM THE LORD LOVETH HE CHASTENETH.”
Thanks to Pammy’s warning the other day, it did not come as a complete shock to see Marcus in Rosington Place. That did not make him any the more welcome. It was just after lunch, and Lydia had returned to work at Shires and Trimble. She was alone with Miss Tuffley — Mr Reynolds was in conference with Mr Shires, and Mr Smethwick had gone to see a client.
Lydia was watering the dusty plants that wilted quietly on the windowsills of the general office. The windows overlooked the chapel on the other side of the road. A large car drew up outside. A chauffeur emerged and opened the nearside rear door. Two men got out. One of them was Marcus and the other was Sir Rex Fisher.
Automatically she drew back from the window. Miss Tuffley, whose typewriter stood on a table by the other window, was less bashful.
‘Oh — now that’s what I call a proper car. They was here the other day. That chauffeur is a big chap, isn’t he? And look at the two gents. You can tell they had silk-lined cradles. First class all the way, eh? I wouldn’t mind being whisked off my feet by one of them, the tall one, especially.’
‘What are they doing here?’
‘Not coming to see me. No such luck. Yes, I thought so — they’re ringing the bell of the Presbytery House. They want Father Bertram. A lot of the toffs are Romans, you know. Funny, that.’ A thought struck her. ‘You’re not one of them, are you?’
‘What?’
‘A Roman. You know — a papist.’
‘No.’ Lydia pulled out a drawer of the filing cabinet with such force that it collided painfully with her knee and laddered her stocking.
Miss Tuffley continued her commentary. ‘What’s that chauffeur doing? Golly! Look at those flowers! Roses in November! Must have cost a fortune!’ She gasped. ‘He’s crossing the road.’
Lydia could bear it no longer. She muttered something about powdering her nose and locked herself in the lavatory for five minutes. When she came back, she found two dozen red roses on her desk. Miss Tuffley was staring at them with covetousness and curiosity.
‘There’s no card with them — I’ve looked,’ she hissed. ‘The chauffeur just gave them to the caretaker’s boy downstairs, along with sixpence for his trouble. Sixpence for running up and down the stairs! But the boy said they were for you. Mrs Langstone, care of Shires and Trimble. There can’t be any mistake.’
Lydia looked out of the window. The car was still there. She had never had much time for roses. They needed too much attention and they had too many thorns. Even when somebody else did the work and removed the thorns, as now, they looked lifeless and artificial and smelled overpowering.
‘You know those men down there, don’t you?’ Miss Tuffley said, chewing on the problem like a dog with a bone. ‘And you never let on. Which one sent the roses?’
Lydia ignored her. Marcus thought women were like children: you could woo them with toys. But he didn’t even trouble to find out what toys they liked.
‘You can have the blasted things,’ she said abruptly.
‘What?’ Miss Tuffley said in an unladylike squawk.
‘You can have the roses. I don’t want them.’
‘But why ever not? They’re lovely.’
