'That's right.' Blake pushed some tea in Sloan's direction. 'Your Superintendent as horrible as ever?'
'He doesn't change,' said Sloan.
'What with him and Happy Harry,'condoled Blake, 'I don't know how you manage, I really don't.'
For better or worse, Superintendent Leeyes was on duty for this weekend.
'Well, Sloan,' he barked down the telephone, 'how are you getting on?'
'Not too badly, sir. I've got a couple of promising lines of enquiry at the moment.'
'Hrrmph.' The Superintendent didn't like optimism in anyone, least of all in his subordinates. 'How promising?'
'Once upon a time, sir…'
'Is this a fairy story, Sloan?'
'A romance,' said Sloan shortly.
Leeyes grunted. 'Go on.'
'Once upon a time a certain Lady Garwell seems to have had an affair with a Major Hocklington.'
'Did she, by Jove?' mockingly.
'Yes, sir.'
'Got her name mentioned-fn the Mess?'
'I fear so, sir.'
'Things aren't what they were in my day, Sloan.'
'No, sir, except that this was all a long time ago.'
'That makes it worse,' retorted Leeyes promptly. 'Much worse. Morals were morals then. I don't know what they are now, I'm sure.'
'No, sir.' The Superintendent's views on vice were a byword in the Division.
'This Lady Garwell…'
'Yes, sir?'
'Are you trying to tell me that this girl who's the cause of all the trouble…'
That was a bit unfair. 'Henrietta, sir?' he said, putting as much injury into his tone as he dared.
'Henrietta.' He paused. 'Damn silly name for a girl, isnt it?'
'Old fashioned,' said Sloan. 'Almost historical, you might say.'
Leeyes grunted. 'You think she's the—er—natural outcome of this affair?'
'I shouldn't like to say, sir. Not without further investigation. The General's practically gaga.'
'Doesn't mean a thing,' replied Leeyes swiftly. 'Or rather, it helps the case.'
'In what way, sir?'
Leeyes gave a chuckle that could only be described as salacious. 'Suppose he's married to some young thing…'
'Well?'
'Then she's much more likely to dilly-dally with this young Major Somebody or Other.'
'Hocklington, sir.'
'Much more likely,' repeated the Superintendent, who was by now getting to like the theory.
'Yes, sir. I see what you're driving at.' That was an understatement. 'But we don't know for certain that she was young.'
'Then find out.'
'Yes, sir.' He swallowed. 'Any more than we know that Major Hocklington was young…'
'It stands to reason, Sloan, that they weren't old. Not if they had an affair.'
'No, sir.' Sloan didn't know Mrs. Leeyes. Only that she was a little woman who bred cats. He wondered what it was like, being married to the Superintendent. He said inconse'She's dead. Lady Garwell, I mean.'
'That doesn't stop her being Henrietta's mother,' snapped Leeyes.
'No, sir.'
'What about Major Hocklington?'
'Hirst—that's the General's man—didn't know.'
'Then find that out, Sloan, while you're about it.'
'Yes, sir.'
'After all, she could have been in early middle age twenty-two years ago.' The Superintendent himself had been in early middle age for as long as Sloan could remember. 'And then died herself comparatively early.'
'Dead and never called her mother, in fact,' misquoted Sloan, who had once seen the Berebury Amateur Dramatic Society play
Literary allusions were lost upon the Superintendent who only said, 'And get Somerset House to turn up Hocklington-Garwell in the Births for twenty-one years ago. Or just plain Hocklington, if it comes to that.'
'Or Garwell,' pointed out Sloan. 'An illegitimate child takes the mother's surname, doesn't it?'
Leeyes grunted. 'At least it's not Smith. That's something to be thankful for.'
'You don't suppose,' asked Sloan hopefully, 'that her ladyship—if she was, in fact, Henrietta's mother—would have taken out an affiliation order against the father?'
'I do not,' said Leeyes.
'Pity.'
'Those sort of people don't.' An eager note crept into the Superintendent's voice. 'What they do, Sloan, is to dig up a faithful nanny who knows them well and they park the nanny and the infant in a cottage in the depths of the country.'
Sloan had been afraid of that.
'And'—Leeyes was warming to his theme—'they support the child and the nanny from a distance.'
In Lady Garwell's case the distance—either way—so to speak—would be considerable, she being dead. Sloan presumed he meant Major Hocklington and said, 'Yes, sir, though I still can't see why Grace Jenkins should have to die just before the girl is twenty-one.'
'Ask Major Hocklington,' suggested Leeyes sepulchrally.
'Or, come to that, sir, why Grace Jenkins went to such enormous lengths to conceal the girl's true name and then talked quite happily about the Hocklington-Garwell's. If Lady Garwell were the mother, it doesn't make sense.'
'Someone has been sending the girl money at college,' said Leeyes. 'She and the clergyman have just been in to say so.'
'Maintenance,' said Sloan.
'Via the Bursar.'
Sloan scribbled a note, his Sunday rest day vanishing into thin air. 'We could leave as soon as we've seen Cyril Jenkins…'
'And,' said Superintendent Leeyes nastily, 'you could see Cyril Jenkins as soon as you've had your tea and sympathy from Inspector Blake.'
Cullingoak was more certainly a village than Rooden Parva. It had all the customary prerequisites thereof—a church standing foursquare in the middle, an old Manor House not very far away, shops, a Post Office, a row of almshouses down by the river, even a cricket ground.
'All we want,' observed Crosby, 'is a character called Jenkins.'
'No,' said Sloan, 'if the civil register is correct, is called Cyril Edgar and should live at number twelve High Street.'
'Dead easy,' Crosby swung the car round by the church. 'That'll be the road the Post Office is in, for sure.'
'Stop short,' Sloan told him. 'Just in case.'
'Sir, do you reckon he's her father?'
'I'll tell you that, Crosby, when I've seen him.'
'Likeness?'
'No.' Sloan remembered Mrs. Walsh with a shudder. 'Something called eugenics.'
They found number twelve easily enough. Most of the High Street houses were old. They were small, too, but well cared for. Neither developers nor preservationists seemed to have got their hands on Cullingoak High Street.
