Sloan said they were not.
She advanced a little.
'The Ministry of Agriculture?'
Sloan shook his head and she came nearer still.
'No,' she said ambiguously, 'I can see you're not from them.' She had a weatherbeaten face, burnt by sun and wind and she could have been almost any age at all. Besides her old raincoat, she had on a serge skirt and black Wellington boots. 'We paid the rates…'
There were no visitors at Holly Tree Farm it seemed, save official ones. Sloan explained that he was looking for a man called Cyril Jenkins.
'Jenkins,' she repeated vaguely. 'Not here. There's just me and Walsh here.'
'Now,' agreed Sloan. 'But once there were Jenkins's here.'
Her face cleared. 'That's right. Afore us.'
'Splendid,' said Sloan warmly. 'Now, do you know what became of them?'
'The old chap died,' she said. 'Before our time. We've been here twenty years, you know.'
Sloan didn't doubt it. It was certainly twenty years since anyone repaired the barn roof.
'We got it off the old chap,' she said. 'The young 'un didn't seem to want it.'
'The young 'un?' Sloan strove to hide his interest.
'Yes.' She looked at him curiously. 'He didn't want it. He'd been away, you know, in the war.'
'That's right.'
'Didn't seem as if he could settle afterwards. Not here.'
Sloan could well believe it. Aloud he said, 'It isn't easy if you've been away for any time.'
'No.' She stood considering the two men. 'Times, it's a bit quiet at Holly Tree, you know. There's just Walsh and me. Still, we don't want for nothing and that's something.'
It wasn't strictly true. A bath wouldn't have been out of place as far as Mrs. Walsh was concerned. Say, once a month…
'This young 'un,' said Sloan. 'Did he ever marry?' She nodded her head. 'Yes, but I did hear tell his wife died.'
'Where did they go after you came here?' It was the question which counted and for a moment Sloan thought she was going to say she didn't know.
Instead she frowned. 'Cullingoak way, I think it was.'
'Just one more question, Mrs. Walsh…'
She looked at him, inured to official questions.
'This old man, Jenkins…'
'Yes?'
'Did he just have the one son?'
She shook her head. 'I did hear there was a daughter too but I never met her myself.'
The Rector and Mrs. Meyton had taken Henrietta out to luncheon in Berebury after the inquest. Bill Thorpe had declined the invitation on the grounds that there were cows to be milked and other work to be done. It was Saturday afternoon, he explained awkwardly, and the men would have gone home. Whether this was so, or whether it was because of the silence which had followed his mention of marriage, nobody knew. He had made his apologies and gone before they left the Town Hall.
Arbican had arranged for Henrietta to come to see him on Tuesday afternoon following the funeral in the morning. He had also enquired tactfully about her present finances.
There had been a lonely dignity about her reply, and Arbican had shaken hands all round and gone back to Calleford.
The mention of money, though, had provoked a memory on the Rector's part.
'This little matter of the medals,' he began over coffee. 'Yes,' she said politely. It wasn't a little matter but if Mr. Meyton cared to put it like that…
'It solves one point which often puzzled me.' He took some sugar. 'Your mother…'
She wasn't her mother but Henrietta let that pass, too. She was beginning to be very tired now.
'Your mother was a very independent woman.'
'Yes.' That was absolutely true.
'Commendable, of course. Very. But not always the easiest sort of parishioner to help.'
'She didn't like being beholden to anyone.'
'Exactly.' He sipped his coffee. 'I well remember on one occasion I suggested that we approach the Calleshire Regimental Welfare Association…'
'Oh?'
'Yes. For a grant towards what is now, I believe, called 'further education.' In my day they called it…'
'After all,' put in Mrs. Meyton kindly, 'that's what their funds are for, isn't it, dear?'
'Yes,' said Henrietta.
'But, of course,' went on Mrs. Meyton, 'it was before you got the scholarship, and though they always thought you would get one, you can never be sure with scholarships, can you, dear?'
'Never,' said Henrietta fervently. She had never been cerherself, however often people had reassured her.
'Mrs. Jenkins was quite sharp with me,' remembered the Rector ruefully. 'Polite, of course. She was always very polite, but firm. Scholarship or no scholarship she didn't want anything to do with it.'
Mrs. Meyton said some people always did feel that way about grants.
The Rector set his cup down. 'But, of course, it all makes sense now we know that Cyril Jenkins wasn't killed in the war.'
'No, it doesn't,' said Henrietta.
'No?' The Rector looked mildly enquiring.
'You see,' said Henrietta, 'she told me that the Regimental Welfare people did help.'
'How very curious.'
'I know,' she said quickly, 'that the scholarship is the main thing but it's not really enough to—well—do more than manage.'
The Rector nodded. 'Quite so.'
'Money,' concluded Henrietta bleakly, 'came from somewhere for me when I got there.'
'You mean literally while you were there?'
'Yes. The Bursar saw that I had some at the beginning of each term.' She flushed. 'I was told it was from the Calleshire Regiment otherwise…'
'Otherwise,' interposed Mrs. Meyton tactfully, 'I'm sure you wouldn't have wanted it any more than your mother would have done.'
'No.'
The Rector coughed. 'I think this may well be pertinent to Inspector Sloan's inquiry. Tell me, did the Bursar himself tell you where it came from?'
Henrietta frowned. 'Just that it was from the Regiment Welfare Association.'
'How very odd,' said the Rector of Larking.
This information was one more small piece which, when fitted exactly together with dozens of other small pieces of truth (and lies), detail, immutable fact, routine enquiry, known evidence, witnesses' stories and a detective's deductions, would, one day, produce a picture instead of a jigsaw.
This particular segment was relayed to Inspector Sloan when he made a routine telephone call to Berebury Police Station after leaving Rooden Parva. He and Crosby had called in at the Calleshire County Constabulary Headquarters to ascertain that the Calleford search for one Cyril Jenkins, wanted by the Berebury Division, had not yet widened as far as the villages.
'Have a heart,' said Calleford's Inspector on duty. He was an old friend of Sloan's called Blake. Rejecting— very vigorously—the obvious nickname of Sexton, he was known instead throughout the county as 'Digger.'
'There's dozens of small villages round here.'
Sloan nodded. 'Each with its own separate small register, I suppose?'
