A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

“As a matter of fact,” confessed Dominic ruefully, “I had wanted to ask, only I didn’t quite like to. But of course it’s settled now, anyhow. I don’t mind, if it makes Paddy feel he’s had a fair hearing.”

“I’m sorry to have had to do it, all the same. I suppose it wouldn’t do to ask you to come along, after all? No, I’m afraid Paddy wouldn’t forgive a dirty trick like that, and he’ll be somewhere not far away.”

“Couldn’t possibly risk it,” said Dominic firmly.

“But it really is a pity, because we could make room for one more sound man in the team.” And lightly Simon turned his deep-brown eyes, in their shapely pits of fine wrinkles etched paler in the bronzed skin, and looked innocently at George. “So how about you, George? I’d be very glad to have you there. Will you come?”

Visitors to Treverra Place were treated to a personally conducted tour of the whole house and grounds, both of which, in their way, were well worth seeing. Miss Rachel, bright as a macaw in black silk and emeralds and a Chinese shawl, tapped her way valiantly ahead with the stick she used as an extension of her personality rather than an aid to navigation, and pointed out, even more meticulously than its beauties, the drawbacks and imperfections of her family seat. She loved visitors; they were allowed to miss nothing.

Treverra portraits filled the long galleries on the first floor, and stared from the lofty well of the staircase.

“Most of them very bad,” said Miss Rachel, dismissing them with a wave of her wand. “All local work, we were not an artistic family, but we insisted on thinking we were.” The listeners got the impression that in her own mind she had been there from the beginning. “There’s just one very nice miniature here in the parlour—a young man.”

“It would be,” said Tamsin softly into Dominic’s ear, bringing up the rear of the procession. But she said it with affectionate indulgence rather than cynically. In her own way she was very fond of her formidable old employer.

“The garden,” announced Miss Rachel, pounding across the terrace and threatening it with the silver hilt of her stick, “is a disgrace. It is quite impossible to get proper gardeners these days. I am forced to make do with one idiot boy, and three days a week from the verger at St. Mary’s. There’s positively no relying on the younger generation. Trethuan promised he’d come in to-day and pick the apricots and Victoria plums. And has he put in an appearance? He has not. Never a sign of him, and never a word of excuse.”

“Maybe he wanted to finish scything the churchyard extension today,” suggested Simon vaguely, attendant at her heels. “He left it half-done yesterday, so the Vicar says.”

“If he’s going to be a jobbing gardener in addition to verger,” insisted the old lady scornfully, “he should be one, and plan his time accordingly. He came in yesterday after noon and picked just one tree of plums, and promised he’d be in to-day to finish the job. I was talking to him in the kitchen-garden not two minutes after you left here to go home to tea, Simon, and he said he’d only had an hour to spare, and he’d just looked in to let me know he’d give me the whole of to-day. And not a sign of him. You simply cannot rely on the young people nowadays.”

“Trethuan is not much above fifty,” explained Tamsin in Dominic’s ear.

“And I particularly wanted to send some apricots down to Phil, while they’re at their best. She has such a good hand with bottling.”

“I tell you what,” said Simon promptly, “get Paddy to come and pick them for Phil to-morrow, and keep him out of our hair. He’s dying to get in on the act, it’ll be a good idea to find him something to keep him out of mischief.”

Miss Rachel halted at the low balustrade of the front terrace, spreading her Chinese silks in an expansive wave over the mock marble. Her shrewd old face had become suddenly as milkily still as a pond.

“Paddy?” she said, in a sweet, absent voice. “Absurd! Such a sensitive boy, I’m sure he wouldn’t join you in your grave-hunt for any consideration. Certainly I’ll get Phil to send him up for some apricots, but whatever makes you think he has any interest in your undertaking at St. Nectan’s?”

Simon laughed aloud. “Just the fact that he came and asked if he could be there. Asked very nicely, too, but it didn’t get him anywhere. It’s no horror project, but still it isn’t for growing boys.”

She had resumed her march, but slowly and thoughtfully. Without looking at him she asked innocently: “When did he ask you?”

“This morning, around noon. Why?”

“Oh, nothing! I just found it hard to believe he’d do such a thing, that’s all.” After I had expressly forbidden it, she thought, in a majestic rage, but she kept her own counsel and her old face bland and benign. Something drastic will have to be done about Master Paddy. This cannot be allowed to go on. The child is shockingly spoiled. If Phil and Tim can’t take him in hand, I shall have to.

“And this,” declared Miss Rachel triumphantly, while the grandmotherly corner of her mind planned a salutary shock for Paddy Rossall, “this is our library.”

She always brought her visitors to it by this way, through the great door from the terrace,, springing on them magnificently the surprise of its great length and loftiness of pale oak panelling and pale oak bookshelves, the array of narrow full-length mirrors between the cases on the inner walls, and the fronting array of windows that poured light upon them. By any standards it was a splendid room, beautifully proportioned and beautifully unfurnished. There was Tamsin’s desk at the far window of the range, and the big central table with its surrounding chairs, and two large and mutually contradictory globes, one at either end of the room. And all the rest was books.

On the nearer end of the long table a large, steaming coffee-tray had been deposited exactly ten seconds before they entered by the outer door; and the inner door was just closing smoothly after Miss Rachel’s one elderly resident maid. When there were visitors to be impressed, the time-table in Treverra Place worked to the split second.

“There he is,” said Simon, “the man himself.”

The painting was small and dark and clumsy, a full-face presentation in the country style; commissioned portraits among small county families of the eighteenth century were meant to be immediately recognisable, and paid for accordingly. There was a short, livid scar across the angle of a square rat-trap of a jaw, redeemed by the liveliest, most humorous and audacious mouth Dominic had ever seen. A plain, ordinary face at first sight, until you looked at every feature in this same individual way, and saw how singular it was. The jaw could have been a