It was evident when they arrived that the second smallest church in England was going to be fairly crowded that afternoon. Several cars were already drawn up along the road, and Mallett had to go some little distance to find a parking place. Hester Greenway was in position opposite the lych gate, watching the gathering of the clans with unabashed curiosity, and Frank and Eleanor joined her while the others went into the church.
“It’s a wonderful turn-out,” she told them. “I really think there are more Gormans here than at the last two funerals. Dick has come, with his wife and both the boys, which I think is rather noble of them, considering. Unless the boys mean to try and drown the baby in the font-he has to live till he’s twelve to make things safe for his mother, doesn’t he?”
Another car drew up. From it alighted a plump young woman in a black skirt that fitted rather too tightly over her haunches.
“Ethel,” murmured Hester, as they watched her hobble uncertainly towards the church door on her high heels. “Why Tom lets her walk about looking like that, I can’t think. Where is Tom, I wonder? Surely he can’t have decided to give the party a miss?”
Even as she spoke, a clatter of hooves made them look round. Tom was trotting up the lane on a thick-set dun cob that seemed familiar to Pettigrew. He waved to them cheerfully as he dismounted.
“I had to take the old horse to be shod this afternoon,” he explained. “There was no time to get home afterwards, so I brought him straight on. Stand there!”
He walked through the lych gate, leaving the animal standing outside, its ugly, intelligent face looking over the churchyard wall in the direction in which its master had disappeared. Apart from an occasional flick of its tail to dislodge the flies, it stood as quiet and still as the tombstones themselves.
“What I wouldn’t give for a beast like that!” Hester murmured enviously. “How did Tom train it, do you suppose? It’s not a bit like his other cattle.”
Hard behind Tom came the party from the Grange, in all the glory of a hired limousine with a uniformed chauffeur. The baby was almost invisible in an elaborate christening robe that must have done duty for generations of infant Gormans, but he and his mother were both eclipsed by the majestic presence of Louisa, splendid in black silk.
“Well!” said Hester, as the little procession, with Doreen and Beryl at its tail, filed into church. “That’s another hatchet buried, it seems. What next, I wonder?”
It was a rhetorical question, but one to which Pettigrew was longing to have an answer. Some way up the lane to his left, he had noticed a car drawn into the side under the hedge, well away from those of the guests at the christening. Now out of the tail of his eye he could see that two or three men were following the perimeter of the churchyard, moving eastwards, away from where they stood. Their heads just showed above the wall, and presently the church cut them off by view. Evidently Inspector Parkinson was doing his best to keep his word, but, as Mallett had said, it was awkward.
Pettigrew had no desire to add to the awkwardness. “Shall we be going?” he suggested. “I think we have seen all there is to see.”
They turned to walk away, but had only taken a few steps when by common consent they halted.
Someone was coming up the lane towards them, a stoutish, pallid man, round-shouldered and unshaven, moving heavily and uncertainly. From his gait and from the state of his shoes it looked as though he had walked some way. In one hand he carried, incongruously enough, an enormous sheaf of scarlet gladioli. It was not until he was quite near to them that Pettigrew recognized Mr. Joliffe.
Joliffe was the first to speak.
“Why, it’s Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew!” he said, in a voice that suggested he had been drinking. “This is a surprise! And Miss Greenway, too-I might have known you wouldn’t be far away on such an occasion.”
“Have you come for the christening?” Hester asked incredulously.
“Yes. I’m late, I know. I ran out of petrol down the road. Forgot to fill the tank-I forget things very, very easily nowadays, ever since-you know.” He looked from one to another of them out of red-rimmed eyes. “And it needn’t ever have happened-any of it-if I’d only known. That’s the-what d’you call it?-irony, that’s the word, the irony of the situation. My grandson! I’m entitled to come to his christening, aren’t I?”
He took off his hat with a gesture. “Good-bye. Glad to have met you,” he said, and walked past them through the lych gate, and up the path towards the church door.
Pettigrew contrived to get there before him.
“Mr. Joliffe,” he said. “The service must be nearly over, and they’ll all be coming out in a minute. Don’t you think it would be better to wait outside instead of going in now and disturbing them?”
To his relief, Mr. Joliffe accepted the suggestion quite meekly.
“Good idea,” he said. “I don’t want to disturb anyone. All I do want is to see the little chap, and his mother. And the girls of course. They used to be fond of their old granddad. But it’s my daughter I want the most, Mr. Pettigrew. It’s her I brought these flowers for”-the gladioli trembled in his hand-“my own daughter!”
Mr. Joliffe was lachrymose, pathetic and quite horrible. Pettigrew averted his eyes. A moment later the church door opened and the christening party poured out into the sunlight.
What happened next was in the nature of an anticlimax. For some time nobody noticed the presence of Mr. Joliffe at all. A cheerful throng of bonhomous Gormans elbowed him to one side while everyone took photographs of nearly everyone else. The mother, the godparents, the parson, Louisa, Doreen and Beryl were posed in varying permutations and combinations. The baby itself passed from one set of arms to another like the ball travelling down a line of three-quarters at Twickenham. It was Doreen who interrupted the orgy of photography by suddenly exclaiming, “Mum! There’s grandpa!”
Edna Gorman was being photographed at the moment, with her son in her arms. She broke her pose at once, handed the infant to Louisa, who was standing near her, and went straight towards her father. The clamour of laughter and chat that had been filling the air was suddenly stilled, and the two met in utter silence.
“Edna, my dear, forgive me,” said Joliffe. “But I had to come. These-these are for you, my dear.”
With a clumsy gesture he thrust the flowers at his daughter. She stood motionless, looking at him as though at a stranger, making no move to take them.
“Take them, please!” he pleaded. “I meant all for the best, I did indeed.”
With a sudden movement she snatched them from him. “Thank you, father,” she said, in a small hard voice. “I wanted some flowers for Jack’s grave. These will do very well.”
She turned abruptly and walked down the side of the church towards the further end of the churchyard. Mallett, who had been in the background, a silent spectator, came suddenly to life. “Not that way, Mrs. Gorman!” he called. “Not that way! Stop her, someone!” But it was too late. She had gone, and her father, still pleading and protesting, with her.
An ancient yew tree, marking no doubt what had formerly been the boundary of the graveyard, stood on the south side of the little church, level with its east end. Its branches now extended almost to the church walls, and tree and church between them effectively screened from sight the end of the churchyard where the most recent graves had been dug. Edna Gorman and her father came down the path between tree and church and stopped aghast. Between them and their objective a rough canvas barrier had been erected. A group of men, some in police uniform, were standing talking beside it. A little to one side, two others were leaning on spades, awaiting orders. As the purport of what she saw dawned upon her, Mrs. Gorman opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came. The flowers dropped from her hand, and Mallett was just in time to catch her as she fell.