CHAPTER NINE
Bill Thorpe shifted his weight from one foot to the other and considered the matter.
'He should have been here, shouldn't he?'
'He was in the East Calleshires,' insisted Henrietta. 'My mother always said he… I was told he was but there's the photograph too.'
'The man in the photograph was wearing their uniform.'
'Exactly,' said Henrietta.
'But that's all.'
'All?'
'All you know for sure,' said Thorpe flatly.
Henrietta turned a bewildered face back to the memorial. 'Do you mean the man in the photograph wasn't killed?'
Bill ran his eye down the names. 'He may have been killed and not called Jenkins.'
'Or,' retorted Henrietta astringently, 'I suppose he may have been called Jenkins and not been killed.'
'That is the most probable explanation,' agreed Thorpe calmly.
'How—how am I going to find out?'
'Did you ever see your mother's pension book?'
'She didn't cash her pension at the Post Office,' she said quickly. 'She took it to the bank. She told me that. Then she used to cash a cheque.'
'I see.'
There was a long pause and then Henrietta said, 'So that, whether or not he was my father, he wasn't killed in the war, was he?'
'Not if he was in the East Calleshires and was also called Jenkins,' agreed Bill Thorpe, pointing to the memorial. 'Of course there is another possibility.'
Henrietta sighed but said nothing.
'He might not have been killed on active service,' went on Thorpe.
'You mean he might have died a natural death?'
'People do, you know,' said Thorpe mildly. 'Even in war.'
She was silent for a moment. Then, 'Nothing seems to make sense any more.'
'Everything has an explanation.'
'This must sound very silly,' she said, choosing her words carefully, 'but let me say what I know for certain. There is a photograph…'
'The photograph is a fact,' acknowledged Bill Thorpe.
'Which you have seen.'
'Then the photograph is doubly a fact,' he murmured ironically.
'There is a photograph of a man in the uniform of this regiment in the drawing room at home, and…'
'And that,' said Bill Thorpe, 'is all you know for certain.'
She stared at him. 'A man who I thought was my father.'
'Ah, that's different.'
'Who I thought was called Jenkins.'
'Who may or may not be called Jenkins.'
'And who I thought was killed in the war.'
Bill Thorpe pointed to the memorial again. 'Don't you see that he might be called Jenkins or he might have been killed in the war—but not both. The facts are mutually exclusive— unless he changed regiments halfway through or something out of the ordinary like that.'
'Or died a natural death,' persisted the girl.
'Or a very unnatural one,' retorted Thorpe.
Henrietta waited.
'Well,' said Thorpe defensively, 'if he'd been shot as a spy or a deserter or something like that…'
'I hadn't thought of that.'
'…We're hardly likely to find his name here, are we?'Bill waved a hand which took in all the hallowed thirteenth-century stone about them.
'That means,' decided Henrietta logically, 'that you don't think the man in the photograph is…' she hesitated, 'or was my father.'
'There is something wrong with the medals…'
'There's something wrong with everything so far,' rejoined Henrietta. 'We're collecting quite a bit of negative evidence.'
'Just as useful as the other sort,' declared Thorpe.
'I'm glad to hear it,' she said rather tartly. 'At the mo-ment the only thing we seem to be absolutely sure about is that there is a photograph of a sergeant in the East Cal-leshires which has been standing in Boundary Cottage ever since I can remember.'
'The photograph is a fact,' agreed Bill Thorpe with un-diminished amiability.
'And so is the name of Jenkins not being on this memorial.'
'The evidence is before our very eyes, as the conjurors say.'
'And the police say Grace Jenkins wasn't my mother.'
Bill Thorpe looked down at her affectionately. 'I reckon that makes you utterly orphan, don't you?'
She nodded.
'Quite a good thing, really,' said Thorpe easily.
Henrietta's head came up with a jerk. 'Why?'
'I don't have to ask anyone's permission to marry you.'
She didn't respond. 'I'm worse than just orphan. I don't even know who I am or who my parents were.'
'Does it matter?'
'Matter?' Henrietta opened her eyes very wide.
'Well, I can see it's important with—say—Shire Oak Majestic. A bull's got to have a good pedigree to be worth anything.'
'I fail to see any connection,' said Henrietta icily.
'I'm not in love with your ancestors…'
The verger ambled up behind them. 'Found what you were looking for, sir, on that memorial?'
'What's that? Oh, yes, thank you, verger,' said Thorpe. 'We found what we were looking for all right.'
'That's good, sir. Good afternoon to you both.'
Not unexpectedly, Mr. Felix Arbican or Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind, Solicitors, shared Henrietta's view rather than Bill Thorpe's on the importance of parentage. He heard her story out and then said, 'Tricky.'
'Yes,' agreed Henrietta politely. She regarded that as a gross understatement.
'It raises several—er—legal points.'
'Not only legal ones,' said Henrietta.
'What's that? Oh, yes, quite so. The accident, for instance.' Arbican made a gesture of sympathy. 'I'm sorry. There are so many cars on the road these days.' He brought his hands up to form a pyramid under his chin. 'She was walking, you say…'
'She was.'
'Then there should be less question of liability.'
'There is no question of where the blame for the accident lies,' said Henrietta slowly. 'Only the driver still has to be found.'
'He didn't stop?'
She shook her head.
'Nor report it to the police?'
'Not that I've heard.'
'That's a great pity. If he had done, there would have been little more to do—little more from a professional
