“I wouldn’t be, if I were with an ordinary girl.”
His cheek against hers, the baffling unusualness of the day overwhelming him with the delicious conviction of complete happiness, suddenly he froze. His mind went away from her, somewhere there over her shoulder, down among the dunes. She pushed him away suddenly, and turned to look.
“Tamsin, do you see what I see? Look, there between the tamarisks.” One man, two, three, slipping along out of the landward hollow, keeping in the tenuous shade of the young hedges, moving towards the church in its deep nest.
Tamsin shivered and took his arm, turning him about and drawing him landward across the road. “Ugh, it’s getting cold. I’d better get home, Dominic. Come on, we’ve got ten minutes’ walking yet.”
George was still on the hotel terrace, smoking his last pipe and watching the sea.
“Hallo!” he said, hearing the unmistakable step of his son and heir moving up on him quietly from the garden. “How’d you make out?”
“Don’t be nosy,” said Dominic austerely, and came and sat down on the arm of the chair.
“Dad—”
“Hmmm?”
“Do you suppose,” asked Dominic very casually, “that there’s much smuggling in these parts nowadays?”
After a long and cautious silence George said weightily: “Now, look, I’m on holiday. I intend to remain that way. The local excisemen and police are quite capable of running their own show. And it’s no business of mine where Sam gets his brandy.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Dominic cheerfully. “So, quite unofficially, of course, what d’you make of this?” And he told him exactly what he had seen in the region of St. Nectan’s church, though not the precise circumstances in which he had come to see it.
“Going towards the church,” said George carefully. “And Tamsin took good care to remove you from the vicinity as soon as she realised what was going on. Yes, quite interesting.”
“Especially,” said Dominic, “since Simon made such a point of broadcasting in the bar exactly when he intended to open the Treverra vault. And then grinned at Sam, and invited him—”
“Or dared him?” suggested George.
“—to be present on the occasion. And the hint and the challenge were taken. On the spot.”
“Now I wonder just where the safe-deposit was?”
“I wonder, too. In the vault itself, do you think?”
“Now mind,” said George warningly, “not a word to anyone else. We’re only in this game by courtesy, if we’re in it at all. It’s the local man’s manor.”
Dominic rose from the arm of the chair, and stretched and yawned magnificently.
“What do you take me for?” he said scornfully, and strolled away to bed.
CHAPTER II
THURSDAY
« ^ »
IT’S TO-MORROW, then,” observed Paddy, coming in damp and boisterous from his morning swim, and plumping himself down hungrily at the breakfast table.
Tim looked up from the paper. “What’s to-morrow?”
“The big day. The day we take the lid off the old gentleman. Mummy said Uncle Simon was alerting the squad last night. Wouldn’t do if anybody got caught with his pants down, would it? Except the squire, I suppose it’s all one to him by this time.”
Not at his most gay and extrovert in the morning, Tim squinted almost morosely at his son over his coffee cup, and wondered if anyone, even at fifteen, could really be as bright and callous as this before breakfast.
“I know!” said Paddy, fending off the look with a grin. “That’s no way to talk about the dead. Still, I bet he’s the only one around Maymouth who isn’t excited about this bit of research. 7 am! And if you’re not, you ought to be. It’s your family. And just think, we may be making history.” He reached for the cereal packet as if it had been the crock of gold, and helped himself liberally. “Mummy, how’s that fresh coffee coming?”
From the corridor Phil’s voice retorted hollowly: “Being carried by me, as usual.” She came in with the tray, and closed the door expertly with her elbow.
Paddy received his cup, laced it with brown sugar to his liking, and returned happily to his preoccupation.
“Think we really shall find anything, Dad? In the coffin?”
Phil stiffened, the coffee-pot suspended in her hand. She looked from her husband to her son, and inquired in suspiciously mild tones: “And where did you get the ‘we’?”
Paddy’s eyes widened in momentary doubt and dismay, and smiled again in the immediate confidence that she must be pulling his leg. “Come off it! You wouldn’t go and spoil it, would you? Not when it’s Uncle Simon’s own personal project? I’ve got to be there, of course.” His smile sagged a little; her face hadn’t melted. “Oh, gosh, you
“I didn’t say you could,” said Tim, truthfully, but aware that he was hedging. He looked doubtfully at Phil’s cloudy face, observed the set of her jaw, and could have kicked himself. He should have known that she wouldn’t think grubbing about among tombs and bones a proper occupation for her ewe lamb. Mothers are like that. Especially mothers as achingly unsure of their hold on what they love as Phil.
“No, but I thought you understood that I was taking it for granted. You must have known I wanted to be there,
