“Of course. Was the inquiry from Paris?”
“From the very top. But it’s quite likely they were passing on an unofficial inquiry from one of the departments. We old comrades of the Resistance, we serve each other without questions.”
We retired to the drawing room for coffee, where the admiral discussed with Lady Pamellor some fussy problem of the Girl Guides and the grammar school, while I was lectured by Sir Thomas on the blindness of the Foreign Office. When at last we got away, Cunobel’s driving expressed his feelings. He roared down a mile of straight road, screeched round two corners and stopped.
“What do you make of it, Charles?”
I said that it seemed incredible but that I was sure the inquiry really had come to Sir Thomas from France.
“You don’t think Pongo is after you himself?”
“Not enough sense.”
“Or friend of Pongo?”
“That’s possible. Likely, even. I can imagine him poring over the map to see who he knows or ever has known within riding distance of Chipping Marton. But I don’t think he’d risk writing to Sir Thomas himself or calling on him. Not yet. And why should he when he can get some French official to do it for him?”
“But, damn it, the man we want is English!”
“If he is, he has some very influential friends in France.”
We sat there in the car trying to think it out, but got no further than the obvious fact that the tiger wanted to know whether I could or could not recognize him. That proved he had not the least suspicion that I had examined him at leisure; but he could not be sure how much I had seen from my perch in the alder. In fact the action on the edge of the badger fortress had been too quick and darkness too far advanced for me to make out anything more than a lump of darkness detaching itself in five quick strides.
The admiral drove on along the top of the Cotswolds while I sat beside him watching that soft sweep of windy country and wondering how and with what gentlemanly excuse the tiger proposed to spring. He was planning to walk straight up to me, perhaps with a cheerful good evening. But where? What lonely spot would allow him to play with his victim, kill and retreat unnoticed? Since few of my movements were regular or easily to be anticipated, how was he to ensure my unsuspecting presence on the ground he had reconnoitered and chosen? Telephone? False message? But I would suspect any and every appointment which might be with death.
What had been his movements since meeting Georgina and confirming that we were both likely to be at Chipping Marton for some time? He might have gone over to France and back several times. He might have been in the Wen Acre Plantation when the instinct of the hunted told me he was thinking of me and made me look again and again behind me.
France … the plantation … and then I saw it. The tails of the squirrels! I had noticed the darker red of the tails and accepted it as a mildly interesting sport of color in the native English breed. But they weren’t English. They were French squirrels. That was why neither Gillon nor I could find the drays. That accounted for his St. Francis act. Three bagged wild, and one from a pet dealer!
And how beautifully simple! The price of my death in Wen Acre Plantation was four red squirrels flown over from France and let loose in a perfectly natural home. A gamble, of course. I might not hear of them. I might pay little attention to them. But if I did, and made a point of watching them, what an opportunity! And he had lost it just because of the one slip of putting France into my head.
I kept this discovery to myself, for I was not yet sure what use I could make of it. I was far from the mood of friendlessness and distrust which had first led me to tackle the whole business alone, but there was no direct help which I could ask. To expose Georgina, the vicarage and Cunobel to anxiety and possible danger was unthinkable. Tying out the goat when the result mattered only to himself was allowable. Tying him out when he was a village pet was cruel.
There were other reasons why the plantation could not be put to use. I was up against the old problem in its clearest form. Picket the Wen Acre with police and we should have no more news of my persistent follower, however well their presence was hidden or disguised. Tempt him by leaving it wide open and I should be hit before I dared shoot. The right policy was to station a first-class shot able to arrest or wound in the second or two after the tiger had made his criminal intention plain. But, assuming the police believed every word of my story —and it was a big assumption —where would they find such a man, willing and able to work patiently day after day with me? Anyway that plan had already failed, even with Ian to help.
No, there was nobody but myself. And I must never accept the tiger’s conditions; I must impose my own. Against his superb cunning in approach I must set my own superiority in fieldcraft and the overwhelming advantage of being able to recognize him when he had no suspicion that I could.
Back I was going — and in that I was determined — to what I called the Saxon England, that imitation of forest which was no forest at all. But how? I was having no more of lonely cottages where sleep and food were so dangerous that I could never stage a convincing act of living a normal life.
The admiral’s usual evening meal was leisurely and ceremonious, but after lunching with Sir Thomas all we could face was a poached egg and some beer. When we had finished, there were still two hours of soft midsummer daylight. Cunobel settled down on the gray stone terrace with a blueprint of the plumbing in a proposed village hall, for he would never admit to himself that he intended to be idle. I guessed that what he really wanted was to admire his roses in peace, so I strolled down to the vicarage.
Georgina, alone on the lawn and smoking a cigarette much too fast, was very glad to see me. Her mood resembled that of some kindly cavalry colonel with a nasty hangover; she was dignified, hurt and well aware that she had brought her troubles on herself. We now had the fences of the glebe meadow in first-class order, so she had taken it upon herself — pooh-poohing the advice of Gillon and Benita —to introduce Nur Jehan to the opposite sex under her personal supervision. The stallion had found his companion charming but annoyingly affectionate. He preferred to talk to Georgina over the gate.
She therefore left him alone. Quarter of an hour later she heard screams for help from the vestry window of the church. Nur Jehan had kicked down the wicket gate between the meadow and the churchyard. The latch on the church door gave him no trouble at all. Once inside and needing comfort, he was delighted to find a human being; it was the organist, a maiden lady of vaguely artistic leanings, and excitable. When her variations on the Wedding March were interrupted by a velvet nose pushed into the back of her neck, she had rocketed off her stool and taken refuge in the vestry.
My aunt, whose first duty was to the valuable mare now loose on the road, had been short and notably profane. By the time she had caught and stabled both horses, and the vicar and Benita had rescued the organist, there was an interested crowd outside the church. Even Georgina, who had no false modesty, was inhibited from explaining the situation to so large an audience.
“What Nur Jehan needs,” I declared, “is work. No kitchen. No petting. Hard work.”
“I couldn’t agree more, Charles,” she said. “I do not know how they manage these things in Persia, but it stands to reason that when a horse is surrounded by boundless desert he must be taught to consider the master’s tent as home. And how to unteach him, I frankly do not know.”
It was the word tent which triggered my instant and clear reaction.
“I think I will take Nur Jehan over to Buckinghamshire and back,” I said, “before Matthew Gillon starts to sleep in the stable. Do you suppose you could get his permission?”