Lucy was expecting to come in sight of the sea quite soon when she realized she was heading more or less directly for the village near which Colonel Procope lived. A glance at the map she carried in her haversack showed her that by the shortest route she was about two hours’ easy riding-time from it. That route, however, involved a longish stretch of road and, although Boris never complained, she knew he preferred to avoid road travel where possible, so a few minutes later she turned aside on a more roundabout approach. Only then did it occur to her to wonder how long it was since it had first entered her head to seek out the colonel and what she hoped to achieve by doing so. She found no answer to either question, and soon put them aside in favour of taking in the look of sunlit greenery and wild flowers and the lulling pleasure of having a healthy, strong, good-natured horse under her. But she still moved along a curving path that led to Procope’s village.
When at length she reached it she found little to see: a few smartened-up cottages, some boring modern houses, a church decorated in the usual flint, but also a post office, and that was obviously her first port of call. With the sound of rock music in her ears, she tied Boris to a convenient rail and went inside among picture postcards and toffee bars as well as stamps and telegram forms.
Instead of a fat old woman with glasses and a pencil stuck in her hair, Lucy found a fresh-faced one little older than herself, in dark slacks and a tee-shirt bearing the name and device of a brand of American cigarette. No less unexpectedly, this person reduced the music to almost nothing without being asked, and smiled a welcome.
‘Colonel Procope?’ she said at once when the name was mentioned. ‘Straight down the hill over there, lane at the bottom on the left, a bit under a mile along on the left. Say twenty minutes’ walk. I suppose it’d be quicker on horseback. That is your horse out there, is it?’
‘Thank you. Yes.’
‘Work at a riding stable, do you?’
‘No. No, he’s my very own horse. I keep him at home and look after him there myself.’
‘That’s nice,’ said the young woman vaguely. She looked out of the window and then over her shoulder before glancing at Lucy and away again. ‘You, er, excuse me asking, but would you be a great friend of his worship the colonel?’
‘Certainly not. My parents see him occasionally but only as a neighbour.’
Lucy thought this description sounded pretty hollow, but it evidently reassured the other girl, who said with another smile, ‘I thought you weren’t, well, his type, kind of thing. Er, he’s not exactly popular round here at the moment.’
‘What’s he been up to?’
‘Not that he’s ever been very highly thought of in these parts, but just the other day, see, he went too far. One of the village lads, young Tommy, well, he’s only a boy, really, not too bright if you know what I mean, anyway, Tommy was playing round the colonel’s place, just like a kid, you know, he wouldn’t be doing any harm, and his nibs flies into a tremendous rage, shouts at him, says he’ll give him a thrashing if he doesn’t make himself scarce that minute. Then laughed and said he was only joking.’
Lucy thought for a minute. ‘Did Tommy tell you all this?’
‘His mother had to like drag it out of him.’
‘Rough luck on poor little Tommy. Did he say anything else?’
‘No. Oh, there was one bit, he said there was something funny about the shed in the colonel’s garden.’
‘M’m. What sort of something funny? I suppose he didn’t say.’
‘Not really. Something about a hole. His mother said he sounded frightened.’
The girl behind the counter herself spoke with sudden reluctance, as if she repented a little of having been so informative. Lucy took her cue, bought a couple of chocolate biscuits and departed.
Twenty minutes later the biscuits were inside Boris and he was standing in the shade and out of view while Lucy, also out of view, sat looking down on Colonel Procope’s domain. This consisted of a small stone-dressed cottage of no particular consequence, a couple of wooden outbuildings and a fragment of land with a spinney at one end and an open gateway on to the road or lane. This was a rough-and-ready affair that on one hand became no more than a track and on the other led to a bridge across a considerable stream. On the far side of the little valley, a more serious road led westward towards Ipswich, Cambridge and other important places.
Nobody was to be seen moving around or near the cottage, not even through the modest but serviceable pair of field glasses that Lucy habitually carried in her haversack and had hitherto shown her nothing more dramatic than the odd pair of nesting waterfowl. It was more than likely that there was nobody in the cottage either. The sense of adventure that had uplifted her since she had reached the village began to subside, leaving her with a half-memory of more childish would-be exploits, adventures of the mind founded on reading and day-dreaming. She was on the point of calling off her fruitless vigil, remounting Boris and making for home — it was too late now for any trip to the coast — when a large dark-blue car she had glimpsed across the valley came into her view again making for the cottage. In due time it slowed up, drove through the gateway, stopped, and set down a figure she recognized without her field glasses as the eccentric colonel. Lucy had calculated that one or other of the outbuildings must be a garage, but if so Procope made no immediate use of it; instead, he went and unlocked the door of a small shed. Seen through her glasses now, he looked carefully about him before going inside. Though Lucy had no fear of being seen as long as she kept still, she found this intensive survey disturbing in some way. It took a full half-minute to complete, at the end of which time he did enter the shed and no doubt locked the door after him. There was no sign of the younger man who had acted as chauffeur in the past, nor of anybody else.
Lucy waited without result. She was again about to leave when she saw the door of the shed open and Procope emerge. After locking up once more, he gave a somewhat abbreviated repeat of his all-round scrutiny, then moved to the front of his cottage, which was out of her view, and presumably went in at the front door. When another ten minutes had passed without incident, she left her observation post, went to reassure Boris, who stood placidly tethered to a handy tree, and walked down the grassy slope towards Procope’s abode, expecting any moment a challenging shout at best. None came. Still nothing happened when she reached the shed and peered in through a small window.
The interior was dark, and her own reflection kept hampering her attempts to see inside, but quite soon she found a vantage point that gave her a limited view. It was not so limited that she failed to make out part of a shallow trench dug in the earth floor of the shed at one end. So that was the hole young Tommy had seen: a trench. But what was a trench doing in a shed? Was it a trench?
Lucy’s heart had begun to beat fast. Trying not to think, only to act, she hurried back to Boris and rode in a sort of semicircle along the slope, down and back till she was approaching along the lane from the village. At Procope’s gate she dismounted, having done just enough thinking to run up an elementary story about finding herself in the district with time to spare and paying a call on the off chance that he would be at home.