Ricky Fleet in white flannels and white shirt with tears of emotion in his eyes after what had been a long narration by H.M. raced and skidded along the hardwood floor. He was
followed by Aunt Cicely, now seriously angry with H-M. for his romantic anecdotes. Last of all, with a lofty air, marched H.M. himself.
'Didn't you,' Martin demanded, 'put the biggest travelling fair in England slap on the main drive of Brayle Manor?’
'Well… now,' said the culprit in question.
'But what's this,' asked Ricky insistently, 'about a train running through Grandmother's bedroom?'
At the same moment, in a hall touched by sunshine through the open door to the terrace, Ruth Callice and Stannard appeared at that door, followed by Chief Inspector Masters. Martin, like the skeleton, almost gibbered as he explained while the others gathered round.
'Jenny?' He turned back to the 'phone.
'Yes, dear?'
'How long has this uproar been going on? Why didn't you ring me?'
'But I only discovered it myself,' Jenny protested, 'about twenty minutes ago. Before I left you last night, you see, H.M. gave me two nembutal sleeping-pills; he got them from Dr. Laurier; and he made me promise to take them as soon as I got home. And I was so worried about you—'
Martin kept the receiver a little way back from his ear. Jenny's small, soft voice was distinctly audible to everyone who had gathered round.
'So,' repeated Martin, 'H.M. gave you some sleeping-pills, so you wouldn't know. Yes, I remember he said he did.'
Sir Henry Merrivale, wearing an incredible air of righteousness, had folded his arms and stood like a statue in a park.
'Dawson and some of the others,' pursued Jenny, 'tried to wake me in the night, but they couldn't. While we had the lights and the noise, I mean. The first I knew was when I heard someone yelling, 'Get your fresh cockles and winkles.''
'Did they — er — ring up your grandmother at wherever she's staying?'
'Priory Hill? No. They were afraid to.'
'When is your grandmother due to come back?'
'At one o'clock, for lunch. I think she's bringing that clergyman back, the one who's so terribly dead-set against horseracing.'
'Holy cats, they haven't got a race-track there, have they?'
'No, no, no! Of course not. And I'm not crying, Martin; I'm only laughing and I can't stop. If you could see this place. Can you please come here soon?'
‘I can be there,' Martin told her, 'immediately. Wait for me!'
'And so can I be there,' Ricky declared in ecstasy. ‘To run you over, old boy. I’d heard about this fair, but I never thought it was going to be anything like this.'
Martin looked at H.M.
'Y’know,' said the latter, taking a reflective survey of the faces round him and then leaning one elbow against the wall, 'I think I must be the most reviled, misunderstood poor doer-of-good in this whole floatin' earth! I try to do Sophie some good, I honest-Injun do! And…'
'How are you going to do her good by sticking winkle-stalls and coconut-shies all over the lawn?'
'Never you mind,' H.M. told him darkly. 'They don’t understand the old man, that's all. They see the result, when it's all over. Then they say, 'How curious! The silly old dummy did it by accident''
His peroration — in which he inquired, rhetorically, whether he was indignant when a skeleton stuck its head but of an electric car to blow raspberries at him; and replied by saying he was the most forgiving soul on earth — his peroration was cut short by the husky chuckle of Stannard.
Stannard looked in fine form this morning, hearty and clear of eye, with hardly a trace of limp.
'Ruth,' he said, 'something tells me this would be a sight worth seeing. Would you care to go?'
'I'd love to!'
'I'm going too,' announced Aunt Cicely, tripping up several steps and running down to look at them, in unconscious pose against the tall window. 'Only not until this afternoon, when I'm properly dressed.'
Ruth looked worried.
'Cicely, do you think you ought? You heard what Dr. Laurier said only this morning. Shock, or excitement…'
'Ruth, I'm not an invalid!' laughed Aunt Cicely.
'Ricky, don't you think you're being a bit inconsiderate?'
'Look here!' said Ricky. 'The reason is—'
He hesitated, looked at them, saw in a wall looking-glass that he wore no coat or tie, and took the stairs three at a bound. 'Tell you later!' he said.
'You for a sun-hat, my dear,' Stannard touched Ruth's arm, 'and I for a suitable cloth cap. I have an instinct that this will be a memorable day.'
'Oh, ah,' Chief-Inspector Masters muttered under his breath, 'it will be for somebody.'
Masters said this when he and H.M. and Martin stood in an otherwise empty hall; And Martin felt again an unexpected coldness round the heart when he saw him look at him: Masters with the unmirthful smile of one who knows all the facts, H.M. with his fists on his hips.
'So!' the latter growled softly. 'You think I'm not attending to business, hey?'
'You don't mean this travelling-fair business is a part of another scheme to…'
'It's the same scheme, son.'
'To catch the mur—?'
'Quiet, sir!' muttered Masters; and his tone was deadly serious. It was as though the blare of fair-music dwindled in Martin's ears; then grew louder with an implication of what it was to conceal.
'But, H.M.,' he protested, 'Jenny tells me you saw this man, What's-his-name, who manages the fair, yesterday morning or afternoon. If I've got the facts right, you didn't tumble to the whole solution until late yesterday night Then how could the fair have—?'.
'Son,' said H.M., 'when I talked to that fine feller Solomon MacDougall I was having — hem! — maybe evil thoughts as well as holy thoughts. About skulls that chattered: you see what I mean? But I also saw last night how the cards were bein' dealt straight into our hands. See what I mean?'
'No.'
'Anyhow, it's so. If you hear Masters or me say, 'Pip,’ you jump to it and ask no questions. Got that?' 'Right.'
Their looks were still in Martin's mind ten minutes later when the old car, with Ruth and Stannard in the rear seat Martin in front with Ricky, moved along the main road southwards under a canopy of mellow sunlight It moved so slowly that Dr. Lauder's car passed them, the doctor giving a pince-nez flicker of greeting and touching the brim of his hat At sight of the other car, Ricky blurted out what he had to say.
'I want to explain,' he said, 'why I seemed to be such a hound towards Mother.'
From their previous conversation, it bad been clear that Ricky no longer felt any distrust of Stannard. Sheer admiration of Stannard's conduct in the execution shed would have done that Stannard’'s friendliness was apparent too, though he treated Ricky as an indulgent uncle would treat a nephew of sixteen.
'My dear boy!' The husky chuckle remonstrated. 'You 'can't be called a hound for inviting your mother to a fair.'
'No, that's just it!' Ricky appealed to Stannard as much as, to Martin. 'But — it's about Susan Harwood.'
Stannard whistled. 'You don't mean they're going to meet?'
'They've met already, in a way. At charity do's. But this is different Martin, you'll stand by? You're in the same boat'
‘I’ll do anything I can, of course.'
Ruth, tapping her fingers on her handbag, said nothing.
