penny a mile.
This morning he treated the world to Deserto in terra. Everybody thinks they've got the best voice in the world. They're wrong. It's really me.
East Anglia's supposed to be lovely in the dawn. I think it's eerie. Ghostly trees assume scary shapes. The occasional shire horse stands there watching. Dense mists slide along rivers. Unexpected bridges lurk near deserted railway cuttings. You need nerve. Jacko was born here, and thinks this is normal. I wasn't, so know there's an alternative to countryside known as civilization. It lives in towns.
Jacko slammed us to a halt so sudden I nearly shot over the bonnet. I couldn't see a damned thing. He ended his aria with a flourish, flat.
'We're here, Lovejoy. Dykers Heath.'
The mist closed in. I thought I saw a vague thicking that might have been a gateway.
Darker blotches could have been an ornamental hedge, or not. Dykers Heath's the name of Caprice and Clovis's estate. I'd been there once, on a balmy summery day.
'You sure, Jacko?' Suddenly I didn't like this. Why was I here? To suss out the county set's gossip about Arthur's death. 'Look. Maybe I'd better—' I screeched as a hand reached in and clutched my arm.
Jacko fell about, rolled in the aisles. 'That'll be a tenner, Lovejoy.'
'I'll owe you, Jacko. Ta-ra.'
There stood this lad, maybe fourteen, thin, fairish hair turning teenage mousey. His blue-eyed features looked familiar. He wore a thick jacket, the sort you see horsey folk don for the dank outdoors. He had the nerve to help me down. Angrily I shook him off.
He'd look a grown man in some wood. I ignored Jacko's imprecations for money.
We started between the gates. He wore cut-down Wellingtons, moved with that countryfied sloth that shifts ground quickly underfoot.
'It's this way.'
When you're lost, miles into the lalang like now, you have to believe these rural clowns.
Except he was no clown. He imparted instant confidence. Immediately the mist's sinister shadows became simple trees and without menace. The earth beneath turned into honest gravel, no grim ditches. Hooded deformed ghouls turned into bushes, quite pleasant really if you like that sort of thing. I couldn't help glancing at the lad. He hadn't said his name.
I'm Lovejoy, er…?'
'I know. Mr Rhodes said to kit you up.'
'You're one of the beaters, then?'
He nodded, or maybe he didn't. These folk who live beyond village boundaries are strange. They assume you'll know the answer, so say nothing. If you guess wrong, the more fool you. And they talk in dialect, hard to follow.
A car's headlights showed off to the right, its engine purring to silence. Doors slammed.
Women's voices raised in that posh country-house scream. I heard a man call welcome.
The clans were gathering.
Not long since, some sociologists - nothing better to do - dug into the nation's pastimes. They 'discovered' the most amazing fact. It's this: folk sometimes go fishing, bird watching, studying nature. This 'research survey' - their term - cost thousands, every groat of which could have been spent on antiques or leprosy. I suppose we were even now being studied by sociologists concealed in the foliage as I glimpsed Clevis's imposing dwelling.
'No. This way.'
Round the back? The Queen Anne frontage emerged from the mists. A butler, no less, and two maids scurried as guests arrived. Shooting brakes, estate cars, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, one sulking Jaguar, showed the visitors' worth. Me and the lad went round the side of the house, in at a small door and up stairs to a gun room. Arrays of double-barrelled shotguns, with several rifles, were chained in racks behind reinforced glass. No antique flintlocks, worse luck, love of my life. A whiskery old countryman was checking the guns.
'Lovejoy, Mr Hartson.'
'Right, Mort. Morning, sir.'
Mort for Mortimer, my brilliant mind snapped up. I saw him in the light. Familiar, indeed. Probably Arthur I was seeing, or hints of Colette.
'Morning,' I said. 'Look. I don't know what—'
'In the ante-room, sir, please.'
Next door was a changing place. I got thick brogues, tartanish stockings, plus fours, a deerstalker hat, shooting jacket, cape. I looked like a duckegg trying to be Sherlock Holmes. Mr Hartson promised me a Westley Richards double-barrelled shotgun. I could war against innocent birds.
'Mort's your bearer, sir. Mr Rhodes is expecting you at breakfast.'
'Ta.'
A right prune in this clobber, I entered the long hall. Twenty guests were already noshing. A chorus of names rose in introduction. I grinned with embarrassment.
Nobody joked about my attire, thank God. I shuffled down the hall.
Most were young middle-agers. Several women were clobbered up for the day's cruelty, but two or three others were fashionably attired, obviously ready for a sloggingly hard gossip over coffee and cream cakes. I don't know about you, but these Sloanies always seem to have bandsaw voices. They look dazzling, clothes that- cost a fortune an inch, yet their endless 'Okayee, yah?' is really dispiriting. Like their protruberant teeth. They don't pronounce the
