university product. As I watched, Mr Handley was served a pint in a pewter by his wife. It must have gone hard with her that he wasn’t paying.
Mrs Handley smiled — still cautious, but I had a persuasion that she was warming to us. I ordered a pint of bitter for myself and the lemonade for the wife, and Mrs Handley seemed quite chuffed at this. Her husband being a man for strong waters only, and her boy not liking lemons, I supposed that she was glad to find a taker for her home-made brew. She poured the lemonade and then said to me: ‘We have John Smith’s bitter, and Thompson’s ale. The Thompson’s is a little stronger.’
‘Oh, my husband knows all about that,’ the wife cut in, and I thought with excitement: Now she’s definitely nervous. Unpredictable things happened when the wife became stirred-up.
Mr Handley made some further remark to the bicyclist. I couldn’t understand a word he said, yet the bicyclist seemed to have no trouble in doing so.
‘Cycling is certainly beneficial in that way,’ he said, in reply to Mr Handley. ‘It is said to promote a general activity in the liver,’ he added, at which he gave a pitying look to Handley, as if to say, ‘But your liver has enough on as it is.’
He then stood up and quit the bar.
I asked for John Smith’s, and plunged in haphazard as Mrs Handley passed me the pint.
‘Almost everyone hereabouts has… well, gone.’
She folded her arms and eyed me for a while.
‘Moffat’s here,’ she said, ‘down on the East Green. He’s the baker.’
‘Why hasn’t he gone?’
‘He doesn’t like Scarborough, I suppose.’
‘Can’t credit that,’ said the wife, and she grinned, whereas Mrs Handley did not. Or not quite, anyhow.
‘Caroline and Augusta are here,’ said Mrs Handley.
‘Who are they?’
‘They’re the old ladies in the almshouses.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘the elderly parties. We saw them. Why haven’t they gone?’
‘Well, they’re too old. They have those houses at a peppercorn rent. They’re supposed to be infirm. They can hardly go off… enjoying themselves.’
And here she did give a quick smile. She was continuing to eye me carefully, however.
‘Who runs the Scarborough outing?’ asked the wife.
‘Christmas Club,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘You see, the Christmas Club here has nothing really to do with Christmas. You put in your money, and you have three days in Scarborough.’
‘Don’t you get a turkey at Christmas?’ I said.
‘You get a chicken,’ Mrs Handley said after a while. ‘But people like the Scarborough jaunt. It’s a village tradition.’
‘I suppose nobody from the Hall’s gone, have they?’ I asked Mrs Handley.
‘Most of the servants have, I believe.’
‘But not the man who cuts the grass?’
‘That’s Ross’s boy,’ she said, and she nodded to one of the two agriculturals, explaining that they were brothers from West Adenwold, to which they would be returning on foot very shortly, together with the grass- cutter, who was son to one of them. I decided to put them out of consideration, along with the two old maids in the almshouses.
‘I believe there’s a new squire in place of the murdered man,’ I said. ‘But that it’s not John Lambert.’
Mrs Handley folded her arms, and smiled at me as if to say, ‘Well now, you’re quite the dark horse, aren’t you?’
‘That’s Robert Chandler,’ she said, slowly, as though feeling her way. ‘He’s Major Lambert’s late wife’s brother. He’s the new tenant.’
‘Why doesn’t John Lambert have the place?’
‘Oh, he owns it. It’s come to him — only he doesn’t want to live there.’
‘Why not?’
‘Bad memories, I expect.’
‘Does he ever come in here?’ asked the wife.
‘No fear,’ said Mrs Handley.
‘What does he do for a living?’ I asked.
Mrs Handley shrugged.
‘I can’t say. I hardly know him. He’s in London a good deal of the time, and in York most of the rest. They say he keeps heaps of books in the gardener’s cottage, a little way off from the main house.’
‘Sir George Lambert,’ I said, ‘- what was he like?’
Did Mrs Handley colour up at the question?
‘He was a sportsman,’ she said presently, ‘always bucking about on his horse. He had the hunt, which came through on Wednesdays and Saturdays like a great whirlwind; he had his shoots, and he had his cricket games…’
‘This inn is his, isn’t it?’ I said, with the wife eyeing me.
‘’Course it is,’ said Mrs Handley, as if to say, ‘Don’t you know how a village works?’
‘What about his wife?’ asked Lydia, no doubt thinking this would be a subject more to Mrs Handley’s taste.
‘Dead long since,’ said Mrs Handley.
Well, I had read something of the account of her death in Hugh Lambert’s papers — the business of the fire seeming always too cold.
‘And so there was no-one to come between him and the boys,’ Mrs Handley was saying. ‘He was very hard on the two boys — on Hugh especially.’
Mrs Handley had fallen to gazing at Mr Hardy the station master, but I was sure there was nothing in this. He was just a convenient object to look at. Mrs Handley’s earlier sadness had returned, and I could see that it was not on account of the murdered father, but on account of the son who was about to swing for the crime.
‘Would Hugh come in here?’ asked the wife, who, having finally entered licensed premises herself, had evidently become fascinated by the question of who else might or might not do so.
‘Master Hugh?’ said Mrs Handley, and she gave a cautious sort of nod. ‘He’d take a glass, and he’d sit in the public. The public, mark you, not the saloon. He was one of the two young masters, and yet he’d sit in the public bar.’ She smiled, saying, ‘Always wore the same suit — dark blue worsted. Lovely cloth, and yet the trouser bottoms clarted with muck, and all up his black boots. He told me one day: “I always wear a city suit in the country and a country suit in the city.”’
As she spoke, she was preparing a supper for us — two plates of cold ham and salad. She handed them over the bar, saying, ‘What do you reckon to that saying of his? Was I supposed to laugh?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll tell you what — he’d look at me until I did laugh.’
And she was almost laughing now.
‘He meant you to laugh,’ I said.
‘’Course he did. He was always coming out with things like that.’
‘Contradictory,’ I said.
‘And he was just ever such… fun.’
‘Unlike John.’
‘John’s clever,’ she said. ‘Clever people aren’t usually much fun, are they?’
And it was clear from this that she didn’t include me in that category.
I looked over at the clerk-type from Norwood — I was pretty sure he couldn’t hear our conversation, nor was he straining to do so. I somehow didn’t feel I ought to ask Mrs Handley about him and the bicyclist, whereas it was all right to ask about the locals. That was the sort of thing an ordinary tripper might do.
The wife said, ‘Mervyn told us that Master Hugh had given him a dormouse.’
Mrs Handley’s smile disappeared for an instant, but it came back as she said:
‘… Came up here, parked himself down on the bench outside, just next to where Mervyn was sitting. He turns
