“Can’t offer you a drink,” Jim apologized. “She won’t ‘ave a drop in the house.”
Mrs. Melton and I shook hands and exchanged smiles. The local prohibition was probably wise. Then she sorted out the Miss Meltons with some proper remarks on language before gentlemen. The water in the doll’s pram turned out to be a time-and-motion experiment; it was easier to take the bath to the puppy than the puppy, who didn’t like it, to the bath. But the pram leaked. I suggested the old fairy-tale remedy of stopping it with moss and daubing it with clay. Mrs. Melton, who was just leading up to all the usual mother’s remarks about playing with water, had from politeness to leave them unsaid.
All this seemed to have acted as sufficient introduction, so when I was alone with Jim I went straight to the point.
“Where did he hire his horse?”
“Now, that’s just what I asks after you and me had our little talk,” Jim replied, “because if I knew enough about that ‘orse to tell the old girl out Blixworth way that it was quiet and going cheap, I’d be doing a favor to you and meself.”
He gave me a horse-coper’s wink which dated from the last century and waited for questions. I said that I supposed he knew most of the livery stables within easy riding of Fred Gorble’s place.
“I do. And that’s as much as to say I know where the ‘orse didn’t come from. So I guessed where he did. Right second time! He ‘ired that ‘orse from Boscastle’s stables in Woburn.”
Jim had turned up at the stables soon after lunch.
Having a perfect excuse for inquiries, he had been able to show as much interest in the hirer as the horse.
The well-dressed stranger had given his name as Mr. fforde-Crankshaw. He had been fussy about the spelling with two little “f’s”; otherwise his manner was unassuming and natural. I thought fforde-Crankshaw was a fine invention —in character, impressive, but not too impressive.
He had hired the horse on the excuse of getting his weight down. Every morning he turned up about nine, rode off and came back before dark. As he paid well, was an experienced horseman and never brought his mount in tired, the proprietor of the livery stables was not worried and would indeed have been delighted — being short of competent staff — to let him exercise his horses free of charge.
Generally he had telephoned for a taxi and caught a ten o’clock train back to London. But on Wednesday night he had not returned till eleven, explaining that he had been dining with friends and that the horse had been well looked after. He had then taken a taxi to Watford and presumably picked up a train there.
Last night — Thursday night —after saying that he might not be back for some days, he had simply vanished while the horse was being unsaddled. The stables did not know how he had returned to London and supposed he had been given a lift by a friend.
I found nothing specially mysterious in that. It was common sense to disappear and cover his tracks when he could not tell exactly what trap he had escaped and whether it was a trap at all. I guessed that he had walked to the A 5 road and got himself home from there — though it seemed risky. That, if anywhere, was where the police block would be.
“Where’s the spade, Dad?” asked the elder daughter, interrupting us.
“Back of the shed. Under them mole traps.”
“No, ‘t ain’t. And we want to dig some clay like the gentleman told us.”
“Well, if ‘t ain’t, it’s where you blasted little darlin’s put it. Last Saturday they slings all their old dolls in a bonfire,” he went on, “and near burns up the pitchfork till their ma has to tell ‘em that girls aren’t never devils. Not in ‘ell, that is.”
Mrs. Melton called us all in to eat sausage and mash, the jackdaw on the table and helping with the mash. She asked no questions. She could mind her own business as well as her husband. They must have been certain of their daughters, too, for they did not care what was revealed in front of them.
“What we want to know now,” said Jim, “is what excuse he gave old Fred Gorble for leaving the ‘orse there all day. Him and his two little ‘f’s’! Two big uns I’d call him!”
“I’ll get that out of Fred,” Mrs. Melton remarked.
There must have been long agreement between Mr. and Mrs. Melton as to their respective spheres of operation. Her offer, without another word, seemed to open his eyes.
“Women!” he exclaimed. “Fred’s no fool, and he don’t like standing up in the box any more than anyone else. That fforde-Crankshaw, he comes ridin’ in looking as stately as a master of ‘ounds and not troublin’ his ‘ead about crime what you’d call crime. So what could he have told Fred? That he was out tom-cattin’ of course! He didn’t want anyone to know as he’d been over this way, and especially not her ‘usband. I’ll drive the missus round to Fred, and she’ll get it out of him like she said she would.”
After supper Mrs. Melton put on a formidable hat, and we went across the kitchen garden to the shed — a store or ammunition hut which Jim had picked up from the army and which now served as garage and barn. Its long axis was set obliquely to the cottage and the door faced more or less up the road.
Inside were piles of useful junk and an incredible vehicle with a shining bonnet —black, powerful, looking as if it were an amateur conversion of one of the royal landaulettes into a van.
“It’s a ‘earse,” Jim explained. “Comes a bit ‘ard on petrol. But that’s an income tax expense. I’m a farmer, see? Got more than five acres, I have, here and there.”
Mr. and Mrs. Melton got in, and the hearse burst out into the road. It was Jim’s method of entering and leaving his garage and may have accounted for the angle at which he set it. No doubt he compensated for his dislike of military service by imagining himself a cowboy in a hurry or a cavalier carrying news to the king.
I was left to entertain the Miss Meltons. A shower drove us indoors and limited the amusements I could provide. There was not a book in the house, so we turned to a paintbox. Caricatures of authority in the shape of schoolteachers and policemen were so popular that for an hour there was silence except for recommendations to make the backside bigger or the nose redder.
Our peace was broken by the jackdaw’s strident call of greeting. The bird seemed to be acting efficiently as watchdog till the new puppy grew up. One of the Miss Meltons looked out of the front window, but there was nobody about. The rain had just started to pelt down and heavy thunderclouds had brought an early dusk.
“Practicing — that’s what he’s doing,” she said, “unless someone has brought the spade back.”
“Dad’s hid it so we can’t bust it,” replied the other contemptuously. “Who’s goin’ to walk mile ‘n ‘alf to borrow a spade?”
No one. I agreed. But if somebody was already here and saw the spade, I could imagine a use for it. Impossible, however. I could not be traced to the Meltons’ cottage. The connection between myself and Jim was absolutely undiscoverable — unless the dark stranger hadn’t gone to London at all and had been hanging around Hernsholt that very day. And I knew he had not. There would have been an immediate report to Ferrin, and from Ferrin to Ian or me.
“Is there anything like a tip of loose rubbish or a sandpit near here?” I asked.
“Top of the slope behind the shed. Good sand, too. Dad’ll sell you a load if you want it.”
I got up and drew the curtains. Jackdaw’s chatter and missing spades were no evidence of anything at all. All the same, I did not intend to go out until Jim was back with us. If meanwhile somebody knocked at the door and asked for shelter from the rain — there was no earthly reason why he shouldn’t — I would have to get the children out of the room and tell him to keep his hands up while we talked.