A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

Paddy. You know him very well, and he’s very fond of you. You know him as Uncle Simon.”

He didn’t exclaim, his face didn’t show surprise, or consternation, or relief, or pleasure, or anything else but the same charged gravity. He accepted it, and sat digesting it.

“His wife died,” said Phil, “and left you on his hands. He was just beginning to be well-known then, and he had a contract for his first big tour. He couldn’t take a baby with him. And I’d lost one only a few months before, and the doctors said I couldn’t have another. So you mustn’t blame him too much. He loved his wife very much, and he was wretched about losing her, and wanted to get away. It wasn’t just fear of losing his big opportunity.”

Since she had invited this single combat, she felt obliged to conduct it scrupulously; and besides, one should never allow a child to contemplate the possibility that he may have failed to make himself loved. But was this a child facing her? The fluffy crest and slender neck and unformed forehead said yes; the grave eyes and something in the set of the face suggested that this juvenile image was already a little out of date.

“It doesn’t mean he didn’t love you,” said Phil firmly. But he didn’t, she thought honestly; he wasn’t a person to whom babies were quite human beings at all, and he isn’t alone in that, it’s something he couldn’t help. “Well, you’ve got to know him pretty well, this visit. He hasn’t shown any want of affection, has he?”

Paddy received the revelation in silence, and continued to ponder with an almost forbidding concentration.

“O.K., Mummy, I see. Thanks for telling me. Now we’re all straight.” He slid his legs out of bed. “I’d better get a move on, or Mr. Hewitt will be sending an escort for me. But I don’t know that I’m going to be much use to him, am I? I mean, my little trek isn’t going to tell him who knocked old Trethuan on the head and tossed him in the sea, is it?”

“That reminds me,” said Phil, glad of the distraction. “Do you know what I found in your pocket last night?” She brought the little gold com, and displayed it triumphantly in her palm.

“Oh, that!” he said, rather disappointingly. And then, as his eyes took in the design and the colour of it, which seemed to be totally unfamiliar: “Gosh, is that what it turned out to be? But it looks really something.” He took it and turned it about curiously, examining it with astonished delight.”What is it? Do you know?”

“You’re a fine one!” said Phil, amused. “First you say ‘Oh, that!’ Then you start goggling at it as if you’d never seen it before.”

“But, silly,” he said, laughing, “I never have seen it before. It was pitch dark in there, I told you, that’s why I had to give up and turn back in the end. I’ve felt it before, though.”

“You found it in this passage in the cave?”

“Yes, way along it as far as I went. I fell over a bit of rock and went down on my hands, and this thing was sticking in my palm. Well, I could tell it was a coin, but all I thought was, somebody else exploring must have had a hole in his pocket, and I was a shilling up. It looks like gold,” said Paddy disbelievingly. “Could it be?”

“I think it could, you know. Guineas and half-guineas were minted in gold, and this seems to be a Queen Anne guinea. You could show it to somebody at the museum, to make sure.”

“You mean it’s really worth a guinea?” His eyes were wide with visions of wealth, and had lost for a moment their look of solemn preoccupation.

“More, I should imagine, if it’s genuine, and I can’t think of a reason why it shouldn’t be. But it might be treasure trove, technically, we should have to find out about that.”

“I thought there’d be a catch in it.” He grinned at her cheerfully enough, still having at least the thrill of discovery. “But there might be more of them, did you think of that? Smugglers might have hidden them somewhere there.” She could feel him suddenly planning, and checking, and contemplating a barrier he might have to get round before he could proceed. Moments of crisis boil up so abruptly out of nowhere. “Mummy!”

The careful, gentle, tentative voice nerved itself, moving in on her. Here it comes, Phil, she thought, and whatever you do there mustn’t be any hesitation.

“Mummy, you don’t mind if I go back there and take another look? With a torch, of course, this time.”

It was a stiff fence for both of them. Knowing he’d frightened her half to death once, and she’d hardly had time yet to get over it, terrified of being babied, but aware that it might be hard for her to give him his head to frighten her in the same way again, he couldn’t quite manage the right easy tone. But that was something she mustn’t let him realise she had noticed.

“No, of course I don’t mind, darling. Take Daddy’s big torch, there’s a new battery in it. Don’t want to risk getting left in the dark again. Do I get a commission, if the hoard turns out to be legally yours?”

After a brief, blank instant of astonished relief and admiration, shaken to the heart at finding himself trusted without even a caution, he said gruffly: “You bet you do! We’ll go halves.”

“Low tide’s about a quarter to twelve. You’ll be able to get in any time after ten. So hurry and get up to Mr. Hewitt, and then you’ll have time enough before lunch.” Blessed reassurance, he wouldn’t risk missing his lunch, not on a day when he was happy, not for all the guineas Queen Anne ever minted.

“I’ll be careful,” he volunteered even more gruffly, and dug his toes hastily into his slippers and headed for the door.

There he checked, ears suddenly pricked, catching the unmistakable sound of Simon’s Porsche starting up in the yard. Phil saw him stiffen, and the resolute shade of thought came down again upon his face. There was a relationship still to be adjusted somehow, and it wasn’t going to be easy.

She wished she could guess what was going on in his mind, but the set of his face told her nothing. All that charm and glamour and excitement suddenly his for the claiming, and more than ready to fall into his lap—if only he would say something to give her a clue! But when he did make his one pregnant comment, it wasn’t much help to her.

“I suppose I’m more fun now,” said Paddy bafflingly, and whisked away to the bathroom.

“I’m sorry,” he was saying, three-quarters of an hour later, in Hewitt’s office overlooking the square, “I don’t seem to have been much help. But I really didn’t look up at the Dragon’s Head at all, and I didn’t see a soul until Dominic came yelling at me. It isn’t as if I’d seen anyone fall from up there, you see. I don’t even know anything accurate about times, because I ran down in my trunks, like I always do, and I didn’t have my watch. I’m