We walked on in silence through the dark woods. Every so often, there came a crashing as a bird tried to fly through the trees, and I did wish they would stop trying, for they put me in a great state of nerves.
When we gained the top of the road that rose from the centre of the village, we saw a greenish light through the windows of The Angel. I opened the front door, and we stepped into the little hallway where we had the options ‘Saloon’ or ‘Public’, or the stairs that led up to our room. There was no question but that Lydia would take the stairs. She didn’t drink, and had never set foot inside a public house, but when I asked, ‘You off up, then?’ she said ‘Not just yet’, and stepped into the public bar with me.
Was it fear or curiosity that had made her do it?
We pushed through the door, and half a dozen — no, eight — faces looked back at us.
It turned out that, whichever door you walked through, you got the saloon and the public, and that the bar — on which stood six green-shaded oil lamps — was a sort of wooden island in-between the two. The ‘public’ side was wooden walls and wooden benches. The ‘saloon’ side was a little smarter. It had the red rose wallpaper and a fish picture over the fireplace similar to the one in our room. This one showed a pike, but with no instructions and no display of hooks. (If you wanted to catch a pike, you could work out how to do it yourself.) All the windows were open, and a warm breeze occasionally wandered through from the ‘public’ to the ‘saloon’ side. Mr Hardy, the fat station master, stood alone at the bar on the ‘public’ side, and there were a couple of agricultural fellows talking and smoking at a table behind him. The two arrivals-by-train — the bicyclist and the man from Norwood — sat in the saloon side, and each had a small round table to himself. The man from Norwood had a pipe on the go, and was reading documents. The bicyclist was eating a pie — the Yorkshire pie, I guessed. Every now and again, he would lay down his knife and fork and give a loud sigh. After a while, it came to me that this might be connected to the fact that Mr Handley the landlord, sitting on a high stool on the saloon side, was addressing him. He did so again now, in a very deep, drunken voice, an underwater sort of voice like a deaf man’s, and I couldn’t make it out, but the bicyclist sighed again and said, ‘It certainly cannot be ridden in its present condition — not with the inner tube holed. The wheel would zig-zag intolerably.’
His machine was evidently punctured. Like most who take to biking he was middle class — might have been a university product. As I watched, Mr Handley was served a pint in a pewter by his wife. It must have gone hard with her that he wasn’t paying.
Mrs Handley smiled — still cautious, but I had a persuasion that she was warming to us. I ordered a pint of bitter for myself and the lemonade for the wife, and Mrs Handley seemed quite chuffed at this. Her husband being a man for strong waters only, and her boy not liking lemons, I supposed that she was glad to find a taker for her home-made brew. She poured the lemonade and then said to me: ‘We have John Smith’s bitter, and Thompson’s ale. The Thompson’s is a little stronger.’
‘Oh, my husband knows all about that,’ the wife cut in, and I thought with excitement: Now she’s definitely nervous. Unpredictable things happened when the wife became stirred-up.
Mr Handley made some further remark to the bicyclist. I couldn’t understand a word he said, yet the bicyclist seemed to have no trouble in doing so.
‘Cycling is certainly beneficial in that way,’ he said, in reply to Mr Handley. ‘It is said to promote a general activity in the liver,’ he added, at which he gave a pitying look to Handley, as if to say, ‘But your liver has enough on as it is.’
He then stood up and quit the bar.
I asked for John Smith’s, and plunged in haphazard as Mrs Handley passed me the pint.
‘Almost everyone hereabouts has… well, gone.’
She folded her arms and eyed me for a while.
‘Moffat’s here,’ she said, ‘down on the East Green. He’s the baker.’
‘Why hasn’t he gone?’
‘He doesn’t like Scarborough, I suppose.’
‘Can’t credit that,’ said the wife, and she grinned, whereas Mrs Handley did not. Or not quite, anyhow.
‘Caroline and Augusta are here,’ said Mrs Handley.
‘Who are they?’
‘They’re the old ladies in the almshouses.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘the elderly parties. We saw them. Why haven’t they gone?’
‘Well, they’re too old. They have those houses at a peppercorn rent. They’re supposed to be infirm. They can hardly go off… enjoying themselves.’
And here she did give a quick smile. She was continuing to eye me carefully, however.
‘Who runs the Scarborough outing?’ asked the wife.
‘Christmas Club,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘You see, the Christmas Club here has nothing really to do with Christmas. You put in your money, and you have three days in Scarborough.’
‘Don’t you get a turkey at Christmas?’ I said.
‘You get a chicken,’ Mrs Handley said after a while. ‘But people like the Scarborough jaunt. It’s a village tradition.’
‘I suppose nobody from the Hall’s gone, have they?’ I asked Mrs Handley.
‘Most of the servants have, I believe.’
‘But not the man who cuts the grass?’
‘That’s Ross’s boy,’ she said, and she nodded to one of the two agriculturals, explaining that they were brothers from West Adenwold, to which they would be returning on foot very shortly, together with the grass-cutter, who was son to one of them. I decided to put them out of consideration, along with the two old maids in the almshouses.
‘I believe there’s a new squire in place of the murdered man,’ I said. ‘But that it’s not John Lambert.’
Mrs Handley folded her arms, and smiled at me as if to say, ‘Well now, you’re quite the dark horse, aren’t you?’
‘That’s Robert Chandler,’ she said, slowly, as though feeling her way. ‘He’s Major Lambert’s late wife’s brother. He’s the new tenant.’
‘Why doesn’t John Lambert have the place?’
‘Oh, he owns it. It’s come to him — only he doesn’t want to live there.’
‘Why not?’
‘Bad memories, I expect.’
‘Does he ever come in here?’ asked the wife.
‘No fear,’ said Mrs Handley.
‘What does he do for a living?’ I asked.
Mrs Handley shrugged.
‘I can’t say. I hardly know him. He’s in London a good deal of the time, and in York most of the rest. They say he keeps heaps of books in the gardener’s cottage, a little way off from the main house.’
‘Sir George Lambert,’ I said, ‘- what was he like?’
Did Mrs Handley colour up at the question?
‘He was a sportsman,’ she said presently, ‘always bucking about on his horse. He had the hunt, which came through on Wednesdays and Saturdays like a great whirlwind; he had his shoots, and he had his cricket games…’
‘This inn is his, isn’t it?’ I said, with the wife eyeing me.
‘’Course it is,’ said Mrs Handley, as if to say, ‘Don’t you know how a village works?’
‘What about his wife?’ asked Lydia, no doubt thinking this would be a subject more to Mrs Handley’s taste.
‘Dead long since,’ said Mrs Handley.
Well, I had read something of the account of her death in Hugh Lambert’s papers — the business of the fire seeming always too cold.
‘And so there was no-one to come between him and the boys,’ Mrs Handley was saying. ‘He was very hard on the two boys — on Hugh especially.’
Mrs Handley had fallen to gazing at Mr Hardy the station master, but I was sure there was nothing in this. He was just a convenient object to look at. Mrs Handley’s earlier sadness had returned, and I could see that it was not on account of the murdered father, but on account of the son who was about to swing for the crime.
‘Would Hugh come in here?’ asked the wife, who, having finally entered licensed premises herself, had evidently become fascinated by the question of who else might or might not do so.