“So—hardly old then.”
“No. And she was misleading us on the second half too, unless I mistake.”
“Now how would you know that?” Joe said again but his voice now conveyed a chilly rebuke rather than a question. A woman’s honour would always be defended by Joe whatever the circumstances. Whoever the woman.
Hunnyton picked up the warning and, as Joe had come to expect, backed away. Advance, retreat, concede territory, disarm, advance again, eyes averted. Joe wondered if he’d recognise the moment the superintendent was ready to throw the saddle over his back. “I wouldn’t know that,” the horseman said easily. “Evidence not so readily available. You might well have a better insight, city gent that you are. It just occurs to me that a woman of her quality, working at her trade, with her chances, well, it would be a bit of a surprise if … Just choosy, I expect. Hard to tell when she comes in from the garden looking like a rook-scarer that’s been pulled through a thorn hedge, but there’s something about her … She’s friendly and yet she has a sort of shield around her. Get close and you’d bounce off.”
“I noticed that, but she’s very unusual. I could swear I’ve seen her, or her like, somewhere before …”
“You have. You pass her every day on your way to work. On the Embankment. She’s standing with a dirty great spear in one hand, chariot reins in the other. She’s hurling abuse at the Roman army and she’s made of bronze,” Hunnyton said, chuckling. “Boadicea! Corst, blast! You wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of that one! Doctor Hartest is a corker but those pruning shears she keeps in her pocket are as much of a warning as the scythes on Boadicea’s chariot wheels. ‘Keep off! You could lose a limb.’ ”
This was a disappointing response. A crude cover to deflect the interest Joe was sure he’d noticed?
“You’re too severe,” he said easily. “I’ve remembered now where I’ve seen her before! She’s not the Queen of the Iceni, she’s a Botticelli goddess … Flora’s her name and she takes centre stage in the painting of Primavera.”
Hunnyton frowned, trying to recall it.
“You know the one—there’s the three Graces on the left, sketchily dressed in diaphanous dresses, dancing about in a bosky dell, cupids and cherubs shooting each other and just to the right of centre, the only one who’s looking at the camera, so to speak, the most amazing girl with honey-coloured hair, a deliciously wicked smile and slanting eyes. She’s offering you a choice bloom from her pinny-ful of wildflowers. Or anything else you have in mind.” He sighed.
“I know it. A bit flowery-bowery for my taste. If lusting after painted ladies is all the go, I’ll admit to being more in tune with Peter Lely. All those Stuart beauties in slippery amber-gold boudoir gowns, pearl drops and just the odd rosebud carefully placed. There’s one of the Countess of Oxford … or is she the Countess of Halifax …?”
Joe knew when he was being sent up. “Ah, yes. Who needs ‘Tit-Bits’ when we have the ‘Tate’ for titillation? But—speaking of aristocratic ladies, I’d guess you are now taking me to the Hall to present me to the Dowager, Sir James’s widowed mother. Is that what you have in mind?”
Hunnyton nodded. “She’s on my list. I thought first we’d call in at my modest abode and spruce up a bit. You’re covered in ginger hairs of one sort or another.”
“Sounds like a good plan. Perhaps while we’re at the Hall I can ask to use the telephone. I didn’t think we could impose on Adelaide Hartest, though I assume the vet has one.”
Joe had unconsciously stumbled into an odd pocket of resentment, judging by the abrupt increase in speed and the exclamation that followed.
“You’ll need some change in your pocket. Bloody English aristocrats! They’ll freely lend you their second best castle for a month, their Rolls-Royce for a week, their mistress for a night but if you want to use their telephone for five minutes that’ll be sixpence please. Just leave it in the dish next to the telephone. Even if you’re reporting that the vicar’s fallen downstairs and broken his neck. If you want a stamp to post a letter it’ll cost you twopence—”
“It’s all right, Hunnyton. Calm down! I know the drill!” Joe understood the anxiety behind this huffing and puffing. “And I’m familiar with the quirks and customs of Society. I won’t let you down. I shall tug my forelock and curtsey to her Dowagership and you won’t need to blush for my manners. I usually find the families are reasonably straightforward. It’s the butlers that terrify me.”
Hunnyton grinned and eased his pressure on the accelerator.
He stopped in front of a house rather larger than the run of cottages strung out along the road and Joe stepped out to admire. Unlike the other reed-thatched dwellings, this one had a steeply pitched roof with an undulating coverlet of plain tiles of all colours from a red so dark it was almost black, fading to buff and cream. Its long front was plastered and colour-washed in the Suffolk way in the brownish-pink of ox blood, dark under the eaves where protected from the rain, bleached to almost white at the level of the brick plinth which ran around the house.
The central front door was a stout affair of weathered oak in wide planks, flattered by a lavishly carved eighteenth-century doorcase of a quality Grinling Gibbons would not have blushed for, brought in from elsewhere, Joe guessed, and scaled down to fit its more modest circumstances. Seeing his eyes on it, Hunnyton accounted for it: “I rescued the casing from Owles Hall when they demolished it ten years ago. They were about to chuck it on the bonfire. I had to take a saw to it to make it fit, but …” He shrugged.
“Better a fragment than a pile of ashes,” Joe supplied. “And you kept the best bits.” His hand went out automatically to pat the cheek of a carved cherub, who seemed to smile down an acknowledgement.
The windows on either side were of different sizes and inserted at different levels; tiny panes of ancient glass in leaded frames sat alongside more generously sized panes of Georgian glass. Precisely marking the centre of the cottage, an imposing chimney stack thrust upwards, its bulk unsuccessfully disguised by a barley-sugar twist of decorative brick-work.
Joe stood, absorbed, trying to grasp the essence of this layering of styles and materials. He realised that Hunnyton was standing tensely by his side, watching for his reaction. When caught off guard, Joe’s lively features were hardly ever able to conceal his emotions. He turned to Hunnyton a face warm with delight and surprise. “Wonderful! It’s a lucky man who holds the key to this house in his pocket!” he said simply.
Hunnyton seemed pleased. “Go straight in,” he said. “No need for keys. The door’s never locked. That’s the Suffolk way.”
As he put out a hand to open the door, the clip-clop of hooves down the High Street caught his attention and he groaned. “We’ve got company. Sandilands—you’ll be needing the old bat’s Christian name. It’s Cecily.”
CECILY, LADY TRUELOVE, hailed them in her hunting-field voice from a distance of a hundred yards. She advanced on them riding a sleek black hunter at a dignified trot, a groom following a discreet distance behind her.
The two men, caught unprepared, straightened their ties, checked each other’s smile and stood ready to greet her.
“Morning, Hunnyton,” she said crisply. “I see you’ve brought us Sandilands of the Yard.”
Hunnyton presented Joe to her ladyship and they nodded politely at each other, the lady looking down critically from her perch. For a woman of her age—early sixties—Truelove’s mother was wearing well, Joe reckoned. Stiff-backed in her riding gear, she presented a more youthful figure than he had expected. Her hair, collected into a glossy chignon below the brim of her shiny riding hat, was dark, elegantly streaked with grey, and her eyes, dark also, were bright and inquisitive. In her youth she must have been a stunner, Joe thought.