unnoticed.
Aubrey seized the largest trout with both hands. To his excited imagination it appeared to present an expression of shocked surprise at being thus rudely disturbed. Switching off the light, he thrust the fish under his arm and ran back to the woods. Here he pushed the trout into what remained of the hole, drew out the spade, and quickly shovelled back the rest of the earth and stamped it flat.
Then, with the circumspect aid of the torch, he felt for the case, intending to find some other hiding-place for it. To his consternation and dismay, it was not to be found.
Aubrey searched frantically. Throwing caution to the winds, he used the torch recklessly, careless of who might see the gleaming light. All was of no avail. The incriminating bloodstained suitcase had vanished.
VII
‘I knew I heard burglars,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay triumphantly to a nervously ill-tempered Jim Redsey and a heavy-eyed worried-looking Aubrey next morning.
‘Burglars?’ said Jim, with a short laugh. ‘What rot!’
‘I object, James, both to your speech and the abrupt, I may say discourteous, tone in which you see fit to deliver it,’ pronounced his aunt coldly. ‘I repeat, there were
‘Valuable?’ snarled Redsey. ‘What tosh! A beastly lot of mid-Victorian atrocities, those trout! As a matter of fact, one of them isn’t a trout at all. It’s a roach.’
‘I do not affect to be a judge of fish,’ said his aunt, ‘neither am I an authority upon their names and habits. I merely remark that there
‘Why you keep harping on the value of the putrid fish I can’t conceive,’ said Jim irritably, perceiving that his aunt was going to get the best of it as usual.
‘If it were not valuable,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay, in a tone which indicated clearly that the argument was at an end, ‘the burglars would not have taken it. If you are going to choke, Aubrey, will you please go outside!’
CHAPTER VI
‘PLEASE yourself, my dear old thing,’ said Felicity despairingly. ‘I don’t mind a bit.’
The Vicar of Wandles smiled upon his daughter vaguely.
‘But you know perfectly well that I’m never happy when I please myself,’ he said. ‘You please yourself instead. Did you notice whether I put Tacitus on the mantelpiece in the other room? I don’t seem to have him with me.’
Apologetically he drew a small clock from the large pocket of his black alpaca coat and placed it on the table.
Felicity went into the dining-room and retrieved the volume in question.
‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to upset you, sweetest, but we shan’t have a single clock in the house that will keep correct time if you go pushing them into the pockets of your coat like that. And I mend those pockets so often,’ she added with a little sigh. ‘Now, about the tennis. Whom shall we have? Aubrey, his awful mother, and Jimsey. That’s three from the Manor to start with. Then I owe Mr Wright an invitation, so that means asking Mr Savile and the unspeakable Lulu as well. That makes six. You and me, eight. Then I ought to ask Margery – she doesn’t get much fun, poor kid – and Dr Barnes. No good inviting Mrs Barnes with them, because she’s away. That’s ten. We ought to have two more, I suppose, and make it up to a dozen. What about the major? We might just as well ask everybody at once, and get it over. Besides, it’s cheaper than having two or three little stunts.’
‘What about Mr Sethleigh?’ suggested the vicar. ‘You didn’t include him with the Manor crowd.’
A shadow crossed Felicity’s brow.
‘Darling, I keep telling you he has gone to America,’ she said. The vicar gazed at her in mild surprise.
‘Really? That’s very curious,’ he said.
‘Why?’ asked his daughter sharply.
Felicity’s nerves were raw. She had not slept for thinking of Aubrey and his task of burying the blood-stained suitcase. A thousand times in fevered imagination she had sped down the Bossbury road with the horrid thing in her hand. In fancy she found herself groping her way into the dark pig-sty, terrified of what she might discover there.
‘Why?’ echoed the vicar. He thought deeply for a moment. ‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘Well, he wants me to witness his will. I promised to go over there on Monday afternoon, when his solicitor was due to arrive, but I completely forgot it.’
‘But you did witness his will, darling. Ever so long ago. I was about sixteen at the time. Don’t you remember?’
‘Oh, yes, I remember that will. I thought it a very fair will, you know. But he was going to alter it. You see, according to the terms of the first will, the chief beneficiary was the young cousin of his, James Redsey. But Redsey has done something to annoy Sethleigh, I should imagine, because this new will, from what I can understand, cuts Redsey right out and leaves the bulk of the property to the boy Aubrey Harringay.’
‘But – but are you certain?’ cried Felicity, going very white.
‘Absolutely. I told the police all about it yesterday afternoon. They came here to find out all I knew about Sethleigh, but I didn’t realize he had gone to America. What have the police to do with it?’
Felicity sat down. She felt that, without support of some kind, her trembling knees would give way and she would fall.
‘Oh, dearest!’ she cried. ‘You didn’t tell them about the altered will?’
‘Of course I did. Why shouldn’t I? Especially as it hasn’t been altered yet. At least, I suppose not, or Sethleigh would have been over here for my signature before this. Oh, you say he has gone to America, though. Did he see Grayling – it is Grayling, isn’t it? – before he went?’
‘No,’ said Felicity, moistening her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. ‘No, he – no, he didn’t.’
‘Oh, well, then Redsey is still the heir. Perhaps Sethleigh will have recovered from his annoyance by the time he returns to England. I like the look of young Redsey. By the way,’ he broke off, ‘I think I must go into Culminster this afternoon. I want to see Crowdesley about the Repairing Fund. We must have something done to the west door soon. It’s the finest bit of Norman work in the county, and it’s simply going to ruin.’
‘Good idea,’ said Felicity, as cheerfully as she could. ‘Perhaps he’ll give you lunch if you trot off at once. I expect he’ll have something nice. Bishops generally do, don’t they? And there’s nothing but the cold lamb here, and precious little of that.’
‘I doubt if it would be a popular move to rush him for lunch,’ said the vicar, grinning boyishly. ‘I think it will have to be the lamb, and I’ll go over there first thing this afternoon.’
The one maid the Vicarage boasted knocked aggressively at the door.
‘There’s a lady across the half-door does be wanting his reverence,’ she announced grandly and with a truly Hibernian toss of the forelock. ‘Will I be after asking her within?’
‘You will,’ replied the vicar, to whom Mary Kate Maloney was an unending source of joy. ‘And kindly refrain from instructing her to wipe her shoes on the mat, as you did the last visitor who came to call on me.’
‘Sure,’ retorted Mary Kate, with the readiness of her race to enter into any argument, however unprofitable, ‘and wouldn’t that be foolishness itself, with no rain falling these twenty days and the road without as dry as Tim Nixey’s throat, and the whole of the sky like brazen brass entirely?’
The vicar chuckled as she flounced out, and Felicity rose to receive the visitor.
‘Mrs Lestrange Bradley,’ announced Mary Kate magnificently. One of her most striking virtues consisted of an enviable ability to grasp names the first time she heard them, coupled with the courage to repeat them aloud with
