some pickles and bread. He picked up a solitary pear, trying not to notice how shriveled it looked. Just as he was settling back in his chair to eat it, he heard a knocking downstairs. He listened again. He so rarely had a visitor that he had never bothered to mend the broken bel pul. The knocking grew more insistent. He opened his door and went down the stairs to the street door. It was even less likely that any visitor would be for his downstairs neighbour. On the doorstep stood Charles. Wordlessly, he folowed Laurence back up to his flat.
'Sorry, old chap. You did say you wanted to see me. Were you in the middle of dinner?' He looked over Laurence's shoulder at his plate. Laurence pushed the half-eaten pear deep into his pocket.
'Come in. It's not very warm, I'm afraid.'
'Hel's bels, man. Are you in training for an Antarctic expedition? No, I'l keep my coat on, thank you.'
Laurence poured out two tumblers of whisky as Charles riddled the grate and shoveled the coal over bals of screwed-up newspaper in the fireplace. He bent over with his lighter.
'Shan't stay long,' Charles said as he got to his feet again. 'But I wanted to tel you what I've been up to. Had to hurry round. Great news. Significant news, that is. You asked me to find out about Liley. Lieutenant Ralph Liley, principal author of Edmund Hart's misfortunes. It wasn't hard to find out that he made it through the war. He left the army, hale and hearty, in 1918, and went back to his parents. Only child. His mother was a Berridge—one of the Shropshire Berridges, so plenty of money coming young Liley's way. Father has a smal estate and officialy Liley returned to manage it. A keen sportsman, our boy, who became youngest ever master of foxhounds of the local hunt. In fact, along with shooting and fishing, that's how he mostly passed his time.'
Laurence spotted the past tense and felt a flicker of anticipation.
'Until?'
'Laurence, you bad man. You're already wishing harm to come to young Liley. Wel, you won't have to wait long. I found he was in the Ox and Bucks. So I started asking around and hit gold with my second cousin, Bim.'
Laurence marveled, not for the first time, at the names of individuals in Charles's circle, names that rarely indicated their sex.
'Bim's wife, Didi, is quite a horsewoman. Marvelous seat, side-saddle. Formidable in top hat and veil. And she hunts with the Old Berks. As does—or did—
their late lamented master, Ralph Liley. Didi was terrificaly happy to find someone who didn't already know the story.'
Laurence knew the hunt from his school days.
'The Old Berks have their stables at Faringdon. The Liley estate is near by; it stretches along the Vale of the White Horse. In fact, do you remember when we used to take picnics out from school and go to Dragon Hil?'
Laurence nodded, memories suddenly flooding in. Legend had it that the hil and guly were where St George had finaly slain the dragon and no grass had grown there since the dragon's blood soaked into the earth. When he was thirteen he had believed this to be fact. Even when he knew it wasn't, the place was stil atmospheric.
'But what's the connection?' he said.
'No connection with Dragon Hil, per se, except that the Lileys lived close by. But also near by, as I'm sure you've realised, is the spot where John Emmett died.' Charles drank his whisky very slowly. Laurence knew he was savouring the moment to come.
'Faringdon Foly.' Laurence said.
'And, indeed, near the smal station at Chalow where, early last spring, Ralph Liley fel to his gruesome death under the London-bound train.'
'Good Lord.'
'Of course you're wondering: did he fal, jump or was he pushed?'
'I suppose so. Which, then?'
'Rather as with Tucker, the official verdict was that it was an accident. They said he fel when somewhat under the influence. He went up most Wednesdays, quite late, to dine with friends in London. It was getting dark. He'd been hunting and had had a stirrup cup or two. There was certainly no hint of suicide. Far too much self-regard, young Liley, and life was going wel for him. He'd just got engaged to the younger daughter of Lord Fitzhardinge, though Didi implied he had rather an eye for women. Plural.'
'But?'
'But there were only four witnesses of any kind. Six, if you count the driver and fireman, though the engine was past the spot by the time Liley went under its wheels. Train almost empty and nobody on that side of that carriage. On the station: a pregnant woman and her mother. Neither woman actualy saw him fal and the one who was with child passed out. The porter was inside and the elderly stationmaster was at the near end of the platform, looking at the engine, not at the people waiting to board, when Liley tumbled on to the line.'
'That's three,' said Laurence.
'Yes. But there's the rub. Liley was talking to another chap just before the accident. That same man jumped down to help the mortaly injured Liley after he fel.
He wasn't yet dead but was not a pretty sight. The driver and fireman stepped down too and the stationmaster ran off to cal for a doctor, though there wasn't much a medic could do with a man who'd gone under a train. By the time they returned, Liley was dead. The doctor had his work cut out, dealing with the pregnant woman and the distressed driver. The stationmaster was trying to keep the few passengers on the train and eventualy the local bobby arrived. By then the other man was nowhere to be seen.
'I actualy drove over on my way back from Bim's to London and had a word with the stationmaster. Both he and the two women had been able to give only the vaguest of descriptions of this other man, and although the stationmaster had a faint feeling he'd seen him travel from there before, he was utterly unable to add to the basic description they al put forward. You'd probably be able to provide it yourself by now: a man in a British Warm and hat. A gentleman, the stationmaster thought.
A soldier, the women had thought. The fireman saw that someone was crouched over, dealing with Liley, but he couldn't describe him at al. He thought it might be the young porter. Nobody got a clear look at his face. The
