opposite his garden gate.
‘Good-day, sir,’ he said to Preddle. ‘Job for the college again?’
‘No, not this time, Benson. Dame Beatrice wants a word with you.’
‘It’s the drains,’ said Benson. ‘If there wasn’t drains, there wouldn’t be varmint. You wants your drains clearin’ out.’
‘She doesn’t want you to go ratting for her, you old chump! I said she wants a word with you.’
‘Not about rats?’
‘Yes, about rats, but not my own personal rats,’ Dame Beatrice explained. ‘What I want to know, Mr Benson, is where the rats came from that you sold to Mr Soames and Mr Preddle at the beginning of this term.’
‘It was a bit before the beginning of term, actually,’ said Preddle. ‘You remember, Benson? You got us a splendid collection. We told you we were experimenting with them as manure.’
Benson received this reminder with wheezy mirth.
‘Tell you anything, the young,gentlemen will,’ he confided to Dame Beatrice. ‘Course, I never believed it. Up to one of their larks, I reckoned. Why, I could tell you…’
‘Yes, another time, you old liar,’ said Preddle. ‘Dame Beatrice hasn’t got all the afternoon to waste listening to your tall stories. Fire away, Dame Beatrice, or he’ll talk you into a coma.’
Dame Beatrice accepted this advice.
‘All I want to know,’ she said, ‘is where those rats came from.’
‘Where they come from? Why, all over the place. The farms round ’ere is fair drippin’ wi’ rats. Drop from the thatch, they do.’
‘Do you know Calladale, the agricultural college for women, twenty-five miles from here?’
‘Ah, that I do. Why, I remember, one time, they ’ad to fetch me in to put down their varmint. Somebody ’adn’t ’ad no more sense than to store ’op-manure in the cellars. They was knee-deep—ah, waist-deep—in rats. My word! I never seed so many o’ the varmint in my life, and when Mr Soames and Mr Preddle came along orderin’ me to find ’em an ’underd rats, I says to ’em, I says, “Why don’t you gennelmen go to Calladale College?” I says. You’ll mind me makin’ the remark, Mr Preddle, sir? “Why don’t you go over to Calladale College?” I says. “That’s where they grows rats on their gooseberry bushes.” Them was my words, wasn’t they, Mr Preddle, sir?’
‘Just about.’
Old Benson chuckled and threw a bit of stick at a cat which was creeping up on a robin.
‘And do you know what?’ he said, an expression of great cunning spreading itself over his wizened and grimy countenance, ‘That’s just where the bulk o’ they rats o’ yourn came from, Mr Preddle, sir. Never knoo that afore, did’ee?’
‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Preddle. ‘Talk about carrying coals to Newcastle!’
‘But this is fantastic!’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Tell me, Mr Benson, did you find any difficulty in getting into the Calladale cellars?’
‘Difficulty? Why should I? Me and the boiler-’and there, we’ve knowed each other since ’e was born.’E’s me nevvy.’
‘Indeed! Did Miss McKay know that you went ratting in her cellar?’
‘No need for ’er to know. ’E pops me into the ’ouse, Tom do, and down the cellar, and we makes a goodish rattling noise to scare ’em into their ’oles, and then I ins with me apparatus and smokes ’em out and the dog, ’e gets plenty. That’s a good dog, that is. Belongs to the landlord at the Bull. Of course, I don’t allus work wi’ a dog, but the gennelmen needin’ the carcasses nice and fresh like, it were the best way to oblige ’em, so I made out. Never git rid of them rats in that cellar, I reckon, not while there’s still the smell o’ that ’op-manure about, which it smelt like a brewery first time they called me in.’
‘Did any rats escape from the inner cellar to the concreted one where the college staff keep their heavy baggage?’
‘Nary a one, mum. We see to that, my nevvy and me. Wouldn’t ’ave done to ’ave ’em gnorin’ the ladies’ baggage. No. We scares ’em into their ’oles and then we opens the door and nips in quick, and shuts the door be’ind us, and then I smokes ’em out wi’ me apparatus and the dog done the rest. No, you can rest assured, mum, that if there’s a complaint about rats gettin’ into that baggage-room down there, it wasn’t nothing to do with me nor young Tom nor old Towser.’
‘There is no complaint,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I am much obliged to you for your information.’ She tipped the old man and Preddle drove her back to the college. ‘Seven o’clock this evening, then,’ she said to him as they parted.
‘With a rose in my hair,’ said Preddle, ‘and old Soames on a lead with a tartan bow on his collar.’
There was no doubt but that the saloon bar of the hotel had become a home from home to Highpepper youth. The door which led into it from the hotel vestibule was open, and Dame Beatrice, glancing in, discovered it to be crowded with young men who bore the unmistakable Highpepper stamp. They were, for the most part, extremely well-dressed, were large and healthy, had loud voices and brown faces. They held pint pots of beer and exchanged ribaldry and repartee with the two giggling barmaids, and when their pots needed replenishing they threw heaps of small change in a lordly manner on the bar counter where it had to be picked up wet with the overflow of that generous topping from the draught-beer which the barmaids inevitably gave.
Dame Beatrice enquired at the reception desk for the location of the private dining-room she had bespoken and a porter was summoned to show her the way to it. Scarcely was she installed when her guests arrived. Dame Beatrice drank sherry and the young men pink gin, and dinner was served at half-past seven. Goose with apple and prune stuffing followed what Dame Beatrice described as an honest, old-fashioned Brown Windsor soup, and the repast continued with apricot pie and ice-cream and concluded with a savoury.
The young men, respectful of good and plentiful food since, like the students at Calladale, they lived from one meal to another and were always hungry in between, entertained her almost affectionately in a relaxed, delightful
