In the kitchen garden Blott listened to the engine turning over. He was wasting his time. He could go on till Doomsday and the car wouldn’t start. Blott had no sympathy for him. “Nature must take its course,” Lady Maud had said and Blott agreed. Sir Giles meant nothing to him. He was like the pests in the garden, the slugs or the greenfly. No that wasn’t true. He was worse. He was a traitor to the England that Blott revered, the old England, the upstanding England, the England that had carved an Empire by foolhardiness and accident, the England that had built this garden and planted the great oaks and elms not for its own immediate satisfaction but for the future. What had Sir Giles done for the future? Nothing. He had desecrated the past and betrayed the future. He deserved to die. Blott took his shotgun and went round to the garage.
Lady Maud in the conservatory was having second thoughts. The look on Sir Giles’ face as he hesitated outside had awakened a slight feeling of pity in her. The man was afraid, desperately afraid, and Lady Maud had no time for cruelty. It was one thing to talk in the abstract about the law of the jungle, but it was another to participate in it.
“He’s learnt his lesson by now,” she thought, “I had better let him go.” And she was about to go out and look for him when the phone rang. It was General Burnett.
“It’s about this business of poor old Bertie,” said the General. “The committee would like to come over and have a chat with you.”
“Bertie?” said Lady Maud. “Bertie Bullett-Finch?”
“You know he’s dead, of course,” said the General.
“Dead?” said Lady Maud. “I had no idea. When did this happen?”
“Last night. House was knocked down by the motorway swine. Bertie was inside at the time.”
Lady Maud sat down, stunned by the news. “How absolutely dreadful. Do they know who did it?”
“They’ve taken that fellow Dundridge in for questioning,” said the General. Lady Maud could think of nothing to say. “Knocked half Guildstead down too. The Colonel and I thought we ought to come over and have a talk to you about it. Puts a very different complexion on the whole business of the motorway, don’t you know.”
“Of course,” said Lady Maud. “Come over at once.” She put the phone down and tried to imagine what had happened. Dundridge taken in for questioning. Mr Bullett-Finch dead. Finch Grove demolished. Guildstead Carbonell… It was such astonishing news that it drove all thoughts of Giles from her mind.
“I must phone poor dear Ivy,” she muttered and dialled Finch Grove. Not surprisingly, she got no reply.
In the garage Sir Giles was doing his best to persuade Blott to stop pointing the twelve-bore at his chest.
“Five thousand pounds,” he said. “Five thousand pounds. All you’ve got to do is open the gates.”
“You get out of here,” said Blott.
“What do you think I want to do? Stay here?”
“Out of the garage,” said Blott.
“Ten thousand. Twenty thousand. Anything you ask…”
“I’ll count to ten,” said Blott. “One.”
“Fifty thousand pounds.”
“Two,” said Blott:
“A hundred thousand. You can’t ask better than that.”
“Three,” said Blott.
“I’ll make it -”
“Four,” said Blott.
Sir Giles turned and ran. There was no mistaking the look on Blott’s face. Sir Giles stumbled round the house and across the lawn to the pinetum. He scrambled over the iron railings and climbed back into his tree. The lions had finished the giraffe and were licking their paws and wiping their whiskers. Sir Giles wiped the sweat off his face with an oily handkerchief and tried to think what to do next.
Dundridge was saved that trouble by the discovery of an empty vodka bottle in the cab of the crane and by eyewitnesses who testified that one of the two men seen driving the crane up the High Street had been singing bawdy songs and was very clearly intoxicated.
“There seems to have been some mistake,” the Superintendent told him apologetically. “You’re free to go.”
“But you told me you were treating the case as one of murder,” shouted Dundridge indignantly. “Now you turn round and say it was simply drunken driving.”
“Murder in my view implies premeditation,” explained the Superintendent. “Now, two blokes go out and have one too many. They get a bit merry and pinch a crane and knock a few houses down, well you can’t feel the same about it, can you? There’s no premeditation there. Just a bit of fun, that’s all. Now I’m not saying I approve. Don’t get me wrong. I’m as hard on vandalism and drunkenness as the next man, but there are mitigating circumstances to be taken into account.”
Dundridge left the police station unconvinced, and as far as Hoskins’ behaviour was concerned he could find no mitigating circumstances whatsoever.
“You deliberately led the police to believe that I had given orders for the Bullett-Finches’ house to be demolished,” he shouted at him in the Mobile HQ. “You gave them to understand that I set out to murder Mr Bullett-Finch.”
“I only told them that you had had a row with him on the phone. I’d have said the same thing about Lady Maud if they had asked me,” Hoskins protested.
“Lady Maud doesn’t happen to have been murdered,” yelled Dundridge. “Nor does General Burnett or the Colonel and I’ve had rows with them too. I suppose if any of them get run over by a bus or die of food poisoning you’ll tell the police I’m responsible.”
Hoskins said he didn’t think that was being fair.
“Fair,” yelled Dundridge, “fair? Now you just listen to what I’ve had to put up with since I’ve been up here. I’ve been threatened. I’ve been given doctored drinks. I’ve been… Well never mind about that. I’ve been shot at. I’ve been subject to abuse. I’ve had my car tyres slashed. I’ve been accused of murder and you have the fucking gall to stand there and talk to me about fairness. My God, I’ve fought clean up to now but not any longer. From now on anything goes and the first thing to go is you. Get out of here and don’t come back.”
“There’s just one thing I think you ought to know,” said Hoskins edging towards the door. “You’ve got a new problem on your hands. Lady Maud Lynchwood is opening a Wildlife Park at Handyman Hall on Sunday.”
Dundridge sat down slowly and stared at him.
“She is what?”
Hoskins edged back into the office. “Opening a Wildlife Park. She’s had the whole place wired in and she’s got lions and rhinoceroses and…”
“But she can’t do that. She’s had a compulsory purchase order served on her,” said Dundridge stunned by this latest example of opposition.
“She’s done it all the same,” said Hoskins. “There are signs up along the Ottertown Road and there was an advertisement in last night’s Worford Advertiser. I’ve got a copy here.” He went through to his office and returned with a full-page advertisement announcing Open Day at Handyman Hall Wildlife Park. “What are you going to do about that?”
Dundridge reached for the phone. “I’m going to get on to the legal department and tell them to apply for an injunction to stop her,” he said. “In the meantime you can see that work resumes in the Gorge immediately.”