went clean out of my mind, and I got these in on appro at the last moment. Which shall I have?”
Tactfully Eleanor steered Mallett’s choice in the direction of the plainest and least offensive of the mugs, and then they became free to talk of other things.
The christening was fixed for half-past three, with tea at the Grange to follow. Mallett was taking his housekeeper to the service and proposed that his guests should accompany them. Pettigrew was quite prepared to go, but Eleanor, unhappy in the knowledge that her holiday clothes would not stand up to the full finery of the Gorman clan on a state occasion, protested vigorously that outsiders would not be welcome. Eventually it was arranged by way of a compromise that they should accompany Mallett to Minster Tracy, but spend the afternoon with Hester Greenway, who was only too glad to entertain them.
It was a fine day, and the prospective godfather was in high spirits, until something occurred on the way that seriously discomposed him. As they turned off the high road into the Minster Tracy lane, another car, coming in the opposite direction, turned also and followed them down the lane. Mallett, normally a punctiliously courteous driver, pulled up abruptly where the road was at its narrowest, so that the following car had to stop also. Then he got out and went back to speak to the other driver.
He was gone some time, and when he returned it was apparent that he was, for him, in a very bad temper.
“That idiot Parkinson!” he confided to Pettigrew, who was in the seat beside him. “For months now I’ve been on at him to get something done, and he has to choose to-day of all days!”
Pettigrew could think of nothing useful to say, and accordingly said nothing. Presently Mallett’s sense of justice asserted itself.
“Of course, he wasn’t to know,” he went on. “And he says it’s too late to stop anything now. He’s promised to keep everyone out of the way as much as possible till the service is over, so I dare say it will be all right. But it is awkward, all the same. It’s my godson I’m thinking of. Are babies of that age easily upset, do you think, Mr. Pettigrew?”
Pettigrew assured him that according to his experience, babies of that age were not normally upset by the activities of the police, and Mallett regained his calm. By the time they reached their destination, the police car had dropped behind and was nowhere to be seen.
It was evident when they arrived that the second smallest church in England was going to be fairly crowded that afternoon. Several cars were already drawn up along the road, and Mallett had to go some little distance to find a parking place. Hester Greenway was in position opposite the lych gate, watching the gathering of the clans with unabashed curiosity, and Frank and Eleanor joined her while the others went into the church.
“It’s a wonderful turn-out,” she told them. “I really think there are more Gormans here than at the last two funerals. Dick has come, with his wife and both the boys, which I think is rather noble of them, considering. Unless the boys mean to try and drown the baby in the font-he has to live till he’s twelve to make things safe for his mother, doesn’t he?”
Another car drew up. From it alighted a plump young woman in a black skirt that fitted rather too tightly over her haunches.
“Ethel,” murmured Hester, as they watched her hobble uncertainly towards the church door on her high heels. “Why Tom lets her walk about looking like that, I can’t think. Where is Tom, I wonder? Surely he can’t have decided to give the party a miss?”
Even as she spoke, a clatter of hooves made them look round. Tom was trotting up the lane on a thick-set dun cob that seemed familiar to Pettigrew. He waved to them cheerfully as he dismounted.
“I had to take the old horse to be shod this afternoon,” he explained. “There was no time to get home afterwards, so I brought him straight on. Stand there!”
He walked through the lych gate, leaving the animal standing outside, its ugly, intelligent face looking over the churchyard wall in the direction in which its master had disappeared. Apart from an occasional flick of its tail to dislodge the flies, it stood as quiet and still as the tombstones themselves.
“What I wouldn’t give for a beast like that!” Hester murmured enviously. “How did Tom train it, do you suppose? It’s not a bit like his other cattle.”
Hard behind Tom came the party from the Grange, in all the glory of a hired limousine with a uniformed chauffeur. The baby was almost invisible in an elaborate christening robe that must have done duty for generations of infant Gormans, but he and his mother were both eclipsed by the majestic presence of Louisa, splendid in black silk.
“Well!” said Hester, as the little procession, with Doreen and Beryl at its tail, filed into church. “That’s another hatchet buried, it seems. What next, I wonder?”
It was a rhetorical question, but one to which Pettigrew was longing to have an answer. Some way up the lane to his left, he had noticed a car drawn into the side under the hedge, well away from those of the guests at the christening. Now out of the tail of his eye he could see that two or three men were following the perimeter of the churchyard, moving eastwards, away from where they stood. Their heads just showed above the wall, and presently the church cut them off by view. Evidently Inspector Parkinson was doing his best to keep his word, but, as Mallett had said, it was awkward.
Pettigrew had no desire to add to the awkwardness. “Shall we be going?” he suggested. “I think we have seen all there is to see.”
They turned to walk away, but had only taken a few steps when by common consent they halted.
Someone was coming up the lane towards them, a stoutish, pallid man, round-shouldered and unshaven, moving heavily and uncertainly. From his gait and from the state of his shoes it looked as though he had walked some way. In one hand he carried, incongruously enough, an enormous sheaf of scarlet gladioli. It was not until he was quite near to them that Pettigrew recognized Mr. Joliffe.
Joliffe was the first to speak.
“Why, it’s Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew!” he said, in a voice that suggested he had been drinking. “This is a surprise! And Miss Greenway, too-I might have known you wouldn’t be far away on such an occasion.”
“Have you come for the christening?” Hester asked incredulously.
“Yes. I’m late, I know. I ran out of petrol down the road. Forgot to fill the tank-I forget things very, very easily nowadays, ever since-you know.” He looked from one to another of them out of red-rimmed eyes. “And it needn’t ever have happened-any of it-if I’d only known. That’s the-what d’you call it?-irony, that’s the word, the irony of the situation. My grandson! I’m entitled to come to his christening, aren’t I?”
He took off his hat with a gesture. “Good-bye. Glad to have met you,” he said, and walked past them through the lych gate, and up the path towards the church door.
Pettigrew contrived to get there before him.
“Mr. Joliffe,” he said. “The service must be nearly over, and they’ll all be coming out in a minute. Don’t you think it would be better to wait outside instead of going in now and disturbing them?”
To his relief, Mr. Joliffe accepted the suggestion quite meekly.
“Good idea,” he said. “I don’t want to disturb anyone. All I do want is to see the little chap, and his mother. And the girls of course. They used to be fond of their old granddad. But it’s my daughter I want the most, Mr. Pettigrew. It’s her I brought these flowers for”-the gladioli trembled in his hand-“my own daughter!”
Mr. Joliffe was lachrymose, pathetic and quite horrible. Pettigrew averted his eyes. A moment later the church door opened and the christening party poured out into the sunlight.
What happened next was in the nature of an anticlimax. For some time nobody noticed the presence of Mr. Joliffe at all. A cheerful throng of bonhomous Gormans elbowed him to one side while everyone took photographs of nearly everyone else. The mother, the godparents, the parson, Louisa, Doreen and Beryl were posed in varying permutations and combinations. The baby itself passed from one set of arms to another like the ball travelling down a line of three-quarters at Twickenham. It was Doreen who interrupted the orgy of photography by suddenly exclaiming, “Mum! There’s grandpa!”
Edna Gorman was being photographed at the moment, with her son in her arms. She broke her pose at once, handed the infant to Louisa, who was standing near her, and went straight towards her father. The clamour of laughter and chat that had been filling the air was suddenly stilled, and the two met in utter silence.
“Edna, my dear, forgive me,” said Joliffe. “But I had to come. These-these are for you, my dear.”
With a clumsy gesture he thrust the flowers at his daughter. She stood motionless, looking at him as though at a stranger, making no move to take them.
