Avedissian stopped the car as they came to a rotting wooden sign-board that was almost totally obscured by foliage. 'What does that say?' he asked O'Neill, who was in a better position to see.
'Valham,' replied O'Neill.
The lane opened out to reveal a picture post-card scene, a cluster of cottages that looked as if they had been there since the beginning of time, but there was a small church at the end of the cluster whose crumbling tower proclaimed its Norman origins.
'One shop,' said Kathleen as they crawled past.
'And a pub,' added O'Neill as they came to an inn beneath the trees called the Mouse and Spade.
'Everything you need,' said Avedissian.
'It's beautiful,' said Kathleen.
'So what did Kell see in it?'
'Let's ask questions,' said Avedissian. 'It's too early for the pub. Martin, you try the shop. We'll try the church.'
'What are we looking for?'
'Anything that Kell might see as a target. Play it by ear.'
Avedissian and Kathleen walked towards the church and entered its precincts through a small iron gate. Their feet scrunched on the gravel and they had to duck down to clear the lower branches of a yew tree that possibly pre-dated the building itself. Gravestones competed in a losing battle with weeds and moss. They had been forced to retreat in disarray to the shadow of the church itself,
Avedissian turned the black handle on the church door and pushed it open. They went inside to be met with the smell of dusty hymn books and threadbare hassocks. Dust in the air was highlighted by sunlight coming in through a window high above the altar.
'Good morning,' said a voice from the gloom at the far end.
They waited while a figure, clad in black, emerged from the shadows and turned in to the centre aisle after bowing to the altar. He came towards them. 'I'm the vicar, Simon Welsby. Can I help you or are you just looking?'
'Actually we're lost,' said Avedissian on the spur of the moment. 'We were making for the base but somehow ended up in Valham.'
'The base? What base would that be?' asked Welsby.
'The military establishment,' tried Avedissian.
'My dear chap, there's no military establishment near Valham.'
'Not so much military, more scientific Civil Service really.'
'Oh I see, research and all that?'
'Exactly.'
'In this area you say… and I didn't know.’
Avedissian and Kathleen wished Welsby good-morning and returned to the car where they found O'Neill waiting. 'Nothing,’ he said.
'Nothing,’ they agreed.
'One good thing,’ said O'Neill.
Avedissian and Kathleen both turned towards him.
‘The pub's open.'
They had to wait outside while the landlord cleared away a number of full crates of lemonade from the doorway. He seemed ill tempered and keen to voice his displeasure. 'I dunno,’ he grumbled. 'Some folks has queer ideas.'
'Problems?' asked Avedissian.
The man paused to mop his brow and straighten his back. 'They order six crates for their trip and I humps them all out for them. Then they don't even bother to pick them up! I dunno.’
'Sign of the times,’ sympathised Avedissian.
The man finished clearing the passage and said, 'Right then, come away in. What'll it be?'
They took their drinks out to the back garden of the inn and nursed them in a general air of pessimism.
'I don't see what else we can do,’ said Kathleen and O'Neill agreed.
'There must be some kind of manor house that goes with a village this old,’ said Avedissian, thinking out loud.
'We can ask,’ said Kathleen.
The landlord's wife had arrived in the bar to be regaled with complaints from her husband about the uncollected lemonade and the sound drifted out into the garden where silence now reigned. 'Maybe they will come for it later, dear,’ soothed the woman.
'Don't be stupid, woman, they've already gone. I phoned the school.'
'Must have forgotten in the excitement, dear.’
'Downright thoughtlessness I call it,’ grumbled the man.
'Yes, dear,’ said the woman with a conspiratorial shrug to Avedissian and the others as she came out into the garden to collect glasses. 'Men!' she whispered in mock collusion. ‘Talk about us women moaning!'
Avedissian took the opportunity to ask the woman about a manor house and she covered her mouth before saying in an exaggerated whisper, 'Just as well you didn't ask Will about that. He might have gone through the roof! Our manor house, Trelford, was turned into a residential school some years ago. It was the school that ordered the lemonade!'
'Oh I see,’ said Avedissian, but his heart was not in it. Their last chance of finding something that Kell might be interested in Valham seemed to have gone. They got up to leave.
As they walked slowly back to the car Avedissian took a detour to look over a stone bridge at the village stream and Kathleen joined him. She saw the troubled look on his face and said, 'You've done all you can. You know you have.’
There has to be something,’ said Avedissian. 'It's just that we can't see it.’
Instead of turning the car, Avedissian drove out the other end of the village, hoping to loop round and re-join the main road. The road on this side of the village seemed even narrower than the one they had come in on and twisted hither and thither as if tracing the bed of some long-forgotten stream. Above them tall trees stretched out to intermingle their branches in a canopy that blocked out the sun.
Half a mile from the village they came to a pair of stone entrance pillars that had been deprived of the gates they once held. A modern-looking board was fixed to one of them, incongruous with its local authority writing. Trelford House School, it said. They glanced up the drive as they passed but could not see anything for the trees.
They drove on but suddenly Avedissian applied the brakes so hard that Kathleen, sitting in the back, was flung violently forward. 'What on earth?' she exclaimed.
'The school! It was the school!' said Avedissian excitedly.
'What about it? It was the one the landlord's wife told us about,' said Kathleen, exchanging puzzled looks with her brother.
'Don't you see? It was the school that Kell was interested in!'
'But why would Kell care about a school?'-asked Kathleen.
'Because of the kind of school it is! The signboard! It said Trelford House School… for Handicapped Young People'.'
Kathleen and O'Neill still looked blank, completely unable to share Avedissian's excitement.
'Trelford must be one of the places to receive an invitation to the royal party! The landlord said that they were going on a trip today but they didn't pick up their lemonade! It's my guess that Kell is running the trip now. Kell doesn't need a tank to get through security. He has an official invitation!'
'My God, he'll be waved straight through!' said Kathleen.
‘The question is, how do we stop him?' said Avedissian.
'Kell must have left men at the house. They wouldn't all go,’ said O'Neill.
'We'll check it out. Make sure we're not barking up the wrong tree,' said Avedissian. He and O'Neill went back to take a look at the house while Kathleen found somewhere more suitable to park the car.
There was plenty of good ground cover up to about thirty metres from the house itself, where the trees
