What Edward wondered competed unsuccessfully with the buzzing of the internal telephone. Answering this was something Ashby seemed to like doing. He threaded his way across the room between couples of old dons and young dons and a parson or two and spoke into the instrument. When he hung up his eyes were on Edward.
‘Call from Suffolk for you in the lodge,’ said Ashby. ‘A Miss Masterman.’
Edward was picking up the receiver in the porter’s lodge in much less time than he had taken over the newspaper. He was breathing quite fast as he gave his name.
‘This is your favourite pupil and relative,’ said the familiar youthful voice. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine, but why aren’t you in Cambridge?’
‘Revising for exams, of course. You could give me a tip or two there, especially over the Metaphysicals. It’s been simply ages since we saw you down this way. I was just thinking, if you happen to be free, why don’t you turn up at your usual time on Friday?’
‘My dear Lucy, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.’
The warmth of Edward’s response was clearly a little surprising to Lucy. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, that is good news, I must say. I’m afraid it’ll be deadly dull, just me and the aged parents.’
‘Couldn’t be better.’
‘Couldn’t it? I was going to offer an inducement, but it seems you don’t need one.’
‘What sort of inducement?’
‘Just, there’s a bit more to tell you about, you remember, that Gray’s Elegy thing. You know, that cod verse I stuck in my essay.’
He very nearly screeched at her to tell him instantly, but thought he had better refrain in the circumstances. Instead, he asked her, ‘You’ve seen the paper today, have you?’
‘Well yes, but what about it?’
‘Look again. Page 7.’
‘A second and more successful attempt, or at least a subsequent one.’
Lucy had settled herself on the floor of her parents’ drawing room in one of those squatting attitudes impossible for any normal male west of Suez. ‘Are we sure about that? If it matters, that is.’
‘That sort of thing always matters,’ said Edward from the sofa. ‘No, we’re not sure, how could we ever be, but there’s a strong suggestion in the fact that this time he avoids the cockney rhyme we noticed in your text. Presumably he noticed it too. Could I have another look at what you’ve shown me?’
‘My text, golly!’ said Lucy, passing him the typewritten sheet.
‘M’m. Yes, this is a workpaper all right, leading to fair copy, probably with one or two precursors. Earlier efforts to you.’
‘Thank you, Uncle.’
‘How certain are you that there are no other bits hanging about somewhere?’
‘As certain as I can be without taking the bloody place apart brick by brick.’
‘All right, Lucy. Well, there it is. I’d give a lot to know who it was that cooked up this stuff.’
‘Would you? What would you do if you did know? What good would it do you?’
‘Put it down to interest. Or instinct. I just want to know.’
‘Would it help to know who typed what you’ve got there?’
‘What are you talking about, of course it would. A hundred, a thousand to one they’re the same person. Why? Surely you’re not going to tell me you know who it was? I don’t think I could stand another shock.’
Lucy jumped up from the rug and seated herself next to Edward, turning her top half round towards him in her best unselfconscious style. ‘I’m afraid I have been rather saving this up to tell you face to face.’
‘Like the typescript. All right, but please keep it as short as you can.’
‘Of course, what do you take me for? The first thing was me tracing the typewriter. That was easy.’
She brought out a sheet that, while a little crumpled, resembled in its general appearance the one he already held. Edward compared them.
‘The typings are certainly very similar,’ he said after a minute or two.
‘More than just very similar. Look at the “d” in mind and abroad and so on. The bulgy part has got a little break in it near the bottom. You see? And the “s” all over the place, too far over to the right. And the “h”. Almost like an “n”.’
After a shorter interval, Edward said, ‘Yes, I do see. But what…’
‘It belongs to my dad. As soon as I saw it, the original one, I thought I knew it. Somebody staying here for the weekend borrowed it off him one afternoon. Would you like to know who it was?’
‘Oh, I suppose I might as well, now we’ve come this far.’
‘Good. He’s called Colonel Orion Procope.’ She spelt the surname. ‘Three syllables, stress on first,’ she explained. ‘Strikes a chord?’
‘There’s a restaurant in Paris called something analogous, but I’m afraid I’ve never heard of any such person.’
‘I’ve an idea there’s a Sir in front of most of that or perhaps a Lord hanging about somewhere, and I’m pretty sure there’s an MC after it. Evidently he did something jolly gallant in the desert. Any better?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Well, I had a shot, at least. Mind you, the colonel, which is how he likes to be addressed — Colonel Orion Procope has rather got the look of, you know, someone who changes his name about a bit. Anyway, you’ll have the chance of judging such things for yourself in a little while.’
‘What!’
‘My turn to be sorry,’ said Lucy, neither sounding nor looking particularly sorry. ‘Yes, he’s coming to dinner. I promise that’s the last of my surprises.’
‘For this weekend at least. Well, that’s a comfort.’
Before they went off to change, Lucy released some further crumbs of information about the gallant colonel. He lived no great distance away, across Suffolk, near the coast; having never married, he lived there on his own, ‘apart no doubt from the occasional fisherman’, according to Lucy; he got invited over for the weekend a couple of times a year, for dinner or Sunday lunch two or three times as often; he might never have been invited at all but for his apparently lonely situation, ‘and he most likely wouldn’t have been even so, if Mum weren’t such an old softie’; he had first met Lucy’s father in the course of some ‘strangulatingly boring’ piece of business in the City of London; he had never been known to say much about his history.
Edward had his usual room at the eastern end of the house, usual at least since Louise’s death. For some months after that death, he had thought he would never have been able to come down here again, but when once he decided to try, it had not proved so difficult. These days, in fact, the place was only fitfully one where he had known some happy moments with her; he valued it more for itself, for its spaciousness, though it was not very grand or very old, and its silence. He liked this part of East Anglia too, never sunny for long, but at some time every day full of light from its enormous sky, which Constable had never forgotten.
Of course this was Lucy’s place too. Now that she was momentarily out of his sight, he found it easier to think of her as an entire person, easier too to consider with some objectivity her resemblances to her aunt, seen in her colouring and the look of her face with its round eyes and arched brows, and felt rather than seen in the way she held herself, upright but with head a little bowed. He now doubted the truth of his earlier impression that the glance of those brown eyes had grown more direct recently. But was he accurate in supposing that he saw her first of all as a version of Louise?
He was tying his tie at the dressing table when out of the tail of his eye he caught a distant movement through the east window. He soon saw a car descending a low hill in the nearer distance. For a few seconds it vanished before reappearing and entering the short driveway, an expensive-looking car sprayed a very dark blue picked out with crimson. After it drew up, just beyond rather than below where Edward was standing, nothing happened for a short time. Then a youngish man in a dark suit and a chauffeur’s cap got out of the driving seat and another about Edward’s age out of the passenger’s seat. What could be seen of the latter showed him to be an average sort of man in a dinner jacket, not tall, not short, with a mop of brown hair that seemed to have kept most of its colour, but there was something about the presumable Colonel Procope that made Edward draw cautiously back from his window.