Roche shifted his gaze unwillingly from the ancient mulberry tree at the corner of the house, its sagging branches crutched with rusty iron supports as befitted the oldest living inhabitant of the picture, to the dilapidated roof of the barn, with its chaos of moss-covered tiles. In one place the ridge was sagging like the mulberry's branches.
"Well?" inquired Wimpy. "What d'you think of it?"
Roche estimated the artfully restored roof of the house against that of the barn. It would cost a pretty penny—that roof would have to be stripped, and the rotten timbers dummy5
replaced . . . but Wimpy had said they'd found the oak for that
—
"It's got you, hasn't it?" said Wimpy. "Good!"
Roche turned towards him, and found that he was smiling.
"What d'you mean—it's got me?" He frowned. "Good?"
"It's in your face. It doesn't take everyone that way. But you're one of the lucky ones—or unlucky, maybe." Wimpy's own face was animated by mischief, almost malice. "I was hoping you would be, because it could help you."
It could help you?
"Let's say . . . you need to see this place, I think, if you're to have a chance of understanding my David—which frankly I don't any more, to be honest—" Wimpy seemed to have overheard that last unspoken question "—because this is David's obsession, so far as I can make out. And I don't wonder, even if he is hardly ever here—I don't wonder—"
Roche didn't wonder either.
"Yes . . . a bit of the old Matthew, chapter four, verse nine, eh?" said Wimpy softly. " 'All these things will I give thee, if only thou wilt fall down and worship me'—if I whispered that in your ear, supposing I had horns and a forked tail and oakum in my boots, how would you reply, young Roche?"
Had that been what the schoolmaster had seen in his face, thought Roche: had the envy been so naked?
He stared all the harder at the house to hide his annoyance with himself. To possess such a place—to hold such a piece of dummy5
Old England—any sensible man would lie and cheat and steal, and do any dishonourable thing, certainly. And fight, of course, as no doubt those old Romans and Saxons and Normans had done—and scheme too, as no doubt those Elizabethan Catholics had done, with the Virgin Queen's Gestapo breathing down their necks—
He found a false smile to give Wimpy. "I don't think I could afford to run it on my pay, not even with the expenses thrown in, let alone employ Cecil and Old Billy, and Mr and Mrs Clarke."
Wimpy nodded. "Good point. I'd have to throw in gold as well, of course. But the Devil always does that, doesn't he!"
And yet there was a mystery here, to add to all the others, now that he'd seen the house: if this was David Audley's obsession, the restoration of the family home to its past glory, his father's intention seemed to have been the exact opposite—to use it, and mortgage it to finance its use, and to let it decay all the while. . . and even at the last to try to sell it over his son's head, which only a German bullet in 1940 had prevented?
"You think we might get at him—at David Audley—through the house, somehow?" Roche faced the little man squarely, frowning sincerity at him. After all, the virtue of this diversion was that if it paid off it would cease to be a diversion. Not Mr Nigel, but Master David, was the objective.
"Hmmm . . . not if 'get at' means 'threaten', certainly."
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Wimpy shook his head slowly. "Threatening my David could be ... unproductive, let's say. It isn't something I'd undertake lightly—he has a streak of obstinacy a mile wide."
At least Wimpy and Oliver St.John Latimer agreed on something, then!
Roche nodded at the house. "Where does the money come from?" It was rather a straight question, but it followed naturally.
"Blessed if I know!" Wimpy's shoulders lifted. "I suppose you could look into that—he could be up to some fiddle, I shouldn't wonder . . . the way we're taxed these days, it can hardly be honest money, and that's a fact!" He turned his gaze to Roche, still with the ghost of the smile on his face.
Then the eyelids shuttered like a camera, and the next expression on the reel was cool and calculating. "But I'd do that carefully if I were you, if it's a volunteer you're after ... I think ... if it's a fiddle it'll be fool-proof— income-tax-inspector-proof, rather."
Roche felt his own eye drawn again towards the house. He had never owned anything like it—he had never even imagined owning anything like it. All that he possessed could be packed into a tin trunk and two large suitcases, plus a couple of tea-chests for his books. Up until recently his heaviest piece of baggage had been an idea, an article of faith which he had pretended to himself was an unshakeable political conviction, which Julie had bequeathed to him as the sole beneficiary of her will. But he hadn't really owned dummy5
the idea for a long time now, and perhaps it had never really been his.
"You take my point? I rather think you do, eh?" Wimpy was observing him narrowly, but was evidently misinterpreting his face this time.
Roche felt his back muscles shiver. How could the man have come so close, after having been so wide of the mark? "But his father didn't take the point, did he!"
"His father? Whose father?" Wimpy frowned.
"Audley's—David Audley's. 'Mr Nigel'— the expectancy and rose of the fair state," quoted Roche brutally. "Wasn't 'Mr Nigel' about to sell the house?" He threw the truth down like a gauntlet between them, challenging Wimpy to choose where his loyalty lay, with the father, his old comrade-in-arms, or with The Old House and his David.
The schoolmaster's face clouded. "Ah . . . well . . . Nigel . . .
was Nigel." He looked up and around nervously, as though he'd only just realised where he was, and Nigel—was —Nigel might be eavesdropping on them. "Clarkie said we ought to look out for her Charlie, because it's time for his tea—half of which we've already eaten . . . And she also said, sotto voce, as we were leaving—as I was leaving—that old Charlie's having one of his turns ... in his downhill phase, as the headshrinkers say . . . which means, the sooner he's back home, the better. You just wait here, old boy, and I'll go look for him—he's in the garden somewhere." Wimpy started to turn away before Roche could open his mouth to protest.
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"Talk about Nigel later, maybe." The turn went through a full circle so that Wimpy was facing him again while retreating backwards towards the wrought-iron gate into the walled garden. "Just look after the books till I get back." Wimpy pointed to the pile of historical novels he had deposited on the gravel. "Or, better still, take 'em into the house and stack
'em on the table by the door, and then have a scout round for yourself—right?"
Roche shut his mouth. If Wimpy was transparently set on ducking the question, solving his loyalty-dilemma simply by quitting the field, at least he was offering something attractive in exchange: to enter The Old House without a running commentary was a chance not to be missed.
"Right." Wimpy waved vaguely, half at Roche, half at the house, and swivelled back towards the gate.
Roche watched him disappear through the trailing cascade of magenta-flowered clematis which covered the stone archway above the gate. Then he dumped his own armful of books alongside Wimpy's and stamped across the gravel forecourt to the porch.
As the door swung open a burst of sunlight edged with rainbow colours caught him full in the face.
He shifted his head, shielding his eyes from the light with his hand, and stared up the beam of light through an arch full of dancing dust-motes into a stained-glass window—a high window blazoned with a rich coat-of-arms, yellow and red dummy5