‘And what part do you play?’ Mrs Bradley enquired with great interest. ‘And have you to shoot an arrow at somebody?’
‘I think I will collect the one in the tree,’ remarked Savile, without attempting to answer either question. ‘A pity to lose it, don’t you think?’
‘Let me get it whilst you resume your waterproof,’ said Mrs Bradley, and before Savile could protest she had stepped nimbly up to the great tree and was wrenching at the arrow with both hands.
‘I am quite pleased to think that you did miss me, young man,’ she observed, as, after the fourth successive pull, she jerked it out.
‘I was actually in the public woods on the other side of the Bossbury road,’ said Savile, taking the arrow from her and placing it carefully in his quiver. ‘But when I observed that the arrow had flown over here into the Manor Woods, I hurried across at once to make certain no damage had been done.’
‘Liar,’ said Aubrey under his breath. ‘That arrow never flew from the other side of the Bossbury road,’ he thought to himself.
‘Are you also acting a play?’ Savile went on.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley unblushingly. ‘A very modern play,’ she added circumstantially. ‘I am sorry the full cast is not here. Aubrey and I were carrying out our respective roles of villain’ – she pointed dramatically to the thin, brown-faced boy – ‘and innocent victim.’ She simpered idiotically and then leered with horrible effect. Savile stepped back a pace.
‘Oh, you must go? Good-bye, then,’ said Mrs Bradley, extending her repulsive-looking claw and giving Savile’s olive-hued hand a grasp which made all the bones grate together.
She waited until he had disappeared, and then hooted joyously.
‘It’s nothing to laugh at, you know,’ said Aubrey, the stern young male. ‘He nearly killed you.’
‘Ah, well! Boys will be boys,’ said Mrs Bradley philosophically. ‘And I don’t think I’ll bother about Margery Barnes, after all. I’ll walk over and see the doctor myself.’
CHAPTER XVIII
The Man in the Woods
I
‘CONSANGUINITY is a queer thing,’ remarked Mrs Bradley.
Dr Barnes filled up a medicine bottle with water, corked it carefully, dried it, labelled and directed it, laid it aside for his boy to deliver, screwed the top on his fountain-pen, and then turned round. Against his white dispenser’s overall his florid face looked even larger and more ruddy than usual. He grunted. He disliked and mistrusted Mrs Bradley to a singularly flattering extent (at least, she thought his attitude flattering, for she had a habit of taking anybody’s dislike of her person and character as a compliment of the highest order!), and made no attempt to conceal his aversion from the object of it. After all, the woman was never ill! Boasted of the fact!
Mrs Bradley, who had watched his professional manoeuvres with detached interest, smiled unpleasantly.
‘Don’t you think so?’ she went on conversationally.
The doctor washed and dried his hands, removed his overall, and hung it carefully upon its appointed hook.
‘Never thought about it,’ he replied briefly. He stretched out his large, shapely hands and turned them over. He was proud of them. ‘Of whom are you thinking? Somebody in particular, of course?’ he said, with perfunctory politeness but complete lack of interest.
‘Yes. My son, Ferdinand Lestrange. And – your son.’
The doctor shrugged his great shoulders.
‘Oh, is he your son? I didn’t know that. Brilliant man,’ he remarked casually. Mrs Bradley’s sharp black eyes, quick and bright and callous as those of a bird, watched him beadily, steadily, as he took his morning coat from a hanger and put it on.
‘Yes, Ferdinand is my son,’ she repeated. ‘A clever boy! Takes after his mother.’
She smirked self-consciously, and the doctor scowled. He hated to see any woman making a fool of herself, but when it came to old women! Of course, the unlovely creature was famous in her way, he remembered! He supposed it had gone to her head!
‘Defended you in a murder trial, didn’t he?’ he remarked, pleasantly conscious that he was saying, socially and humanely speaking, quite the wrong thing.
‘And got me off,’ said Mrs Bradley succinctly. ‘Excuse me! A slight crease across the shoulders. A well-fitting coat, but a little formal, surely, for the time of year?’
‘We have to suffer in order to maintain the dignity of the profession,’ said the doctor, a slightly sardonic smile lifting his dark neat moustache. ‘If it is Margery you came to see,’ he continued abruptly, ‘she went to shop in the village. After that she was going to take on the vicar at tennis! Wish I’d gone into the Church. Lazy lot, these parsons.’
‘But the vicar is not good at tennis,’ Mrs Bradley observed as she followed the doctor out into the garden, ‘whereas Margery is quite a star performer, according to Aubrey Harringay. I should think she would require a more expert opponent.’
‘She’s gone there to practise her service,’ the doctor said carelessly. ‘The vicar is the only person who doesn’t care when people knock the heads off his flowers and things, you see. I won’t have a court marked out on this lawn here. Spoils the grass.’
Mrs Bradley walked to the front gate, leaving the doctor to proceed towards the garage.
‘Hats off to the National Health Insurance!’ she said to herself, looking back at the wide-open doors of the shed where the doctor’s gleaming chariot was housed. ‘If the Medical Council don’t make all their members vote Liberal – well, they’re an ungrateful lot! That’s all I can say.’
She began walking briskly in the direction of the Vicarage, but half-way there she changed her mind and went up to the Cottage on the Hill instead.
II
Lulu was at home. Almost as much to the point, Savile and Wright were not.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lulu, leading the way into the drawing-room, which was immediately underneath the room Wright and Savile used as a studio. ‘Did you want ’em particular?’
‘I called on behalf of the Restoration Fund,’ lied Mrs Bradley glibly.
‘Oh, that. Yes, it wants doing up bad, don’t it? Lovely I think them old churches is, but law! the draught. I give up going. I couldn’t stick it. Not as I ever was one for religion much.’ She giggled and slid a glance sideways at Mrs Bradley from under her eyelashes. She was a lovely creature – one of those women sometimes to be seen in East End Thames-side localities; women with something of the Orient in their ancestry, something of its mystery and allure beneath the crudeness of Cockney speech and the hearty freshness of English laughter.
Mrs Bradley nodded.
‘But you thought sufficiently kindly of the vicar and his daughter to do the church laundry-work and wash the vicar’s own clothes,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh, that!’
Lulu tossed back a permanently-waved lock of lustrous hair and laughed, displaying fine teeth.
‘Brought up to the wash-tub, I was. No ’ardship to put a few bits of things through a drop of water. And that gal of theirs – Shin Finer or somethink I should say by the look of the washing she ’angs out. I couldn’t stand seeing them bits of boys and the parson in them dirty-lookin’ yaller chimmies of theirn Sunday after Sunday. “Disgraceful, I calls it,” I said to Clef. That was before the draughts got too much of a good thing, and I used to go to ’ear Clef sing. Lovely ’e sings. ’Aven’t you never ’eard ’im? Bit of all right, I tell you. So I washes ’em now. It ain’t nothink, but I may get a good mark for it one of these days when my number goes up. Never know, do you?’
‘No, you never do,’ agreed Mrs Bradley gravely. ‘But all the same, child, how did you come to scorch the things so badly about a month ago?’