Hirst looked up, recognised him and put down his gla.s.s with a hand that was not quite steady. "Yes, sir. That you did."
"It was quite accidental..."
"Proper upset, he was. I had quite a time with him last night after you"d gone, I can tell you."
"You did?" enquired Sloan, even more interested.
"Carrying on alarming he was till I got him to bed."
"Hirst, what was it we said that did it?"
"The General didn"t say." He lifted his gla.s.s. "But he was upset all right."
"I was asking him something about the past," said Sloan carefully, watching Hirst"s face. "Something I wanted to know about a woman who-I think-was called Grace Jenkins."
There was no reaction from Hirst.
"Do you know the name?" persisted Sloan.
"Can"t say that I do." Rea.s.sured, he took another pull at his beer. "It"s a common enough one."
"That"s part of the trouble."
"I see."
"Garwell"s not a common name," said Sloan conversationally.
"No," agreed Hirst. "There"s not many of them about."
"And Hocklington-Garwell isn"t common at all."
Hirst set his gla.s.s down with a clatter. "You mentioned Hocklington-Garwell to the General?"
"I did."
"You shouldn"t have done that, sir," said Hirst reproachfully.
"This woman Jenkins told her daughter that she used to be nursemaid to the family."
"No wonder the General was so upset. In fact, what with her ladyship being dead, I should say it would have upset the General more than anything else would have done."
"It did," agreed Sloan briefly, "but why?"
Hirst sucked his teeth. "Begging your pardon, Mr. Sloan, sir, I should have said it was all over and done with long before your time."
"What," cried Sloan in exasperation, "was all over and done with before my time?"
"That explains why the General was so upset about your being a detective, sir, if you"ll forgive my mentioning it."
Sloan, who had been a detective for at least ten years without ever before feeling the fact to be unmentionable, looked at the faded gentleman"s gentleman and said he would forgive him.
"I kept on telling him," said Hirst, "that it was all over and done with." He took another sip of beer. "But it wasn"t any good. I had to get the doctor to him this morning, you know."
"Hirst," said Sloan dangerously, "I need to know exactly what it was that was over and done with before my time and I need to know now."
"The Hocklington-Garwell business. Before the last war, it was. And she is dead now, G.o.d rest her soul, so why drag it up again?"
"Who is dead?" Sloan was hanging on to his temper with an effort. A great effort.
"Her ladyship, like I told you. And Major Hocklington, too, for all I know."
"Hirst, I think I am beginning to see daylight. Hocklington and Garwell are two different people, aren"t they?"
"That"s right, sir. Like I said. There"s the General who you saw yesterday and then there was Major Hocklington-only it"s all a long time ago now, sir, so can"t you let the whole business alone?"
"Not as easily as you might think, Hirst."
"For the sake of the General, sir..."
"Am I to understand, Hirst, that Lady Garwell and this Major Hocklington had an affair?"
Hirst plunged his face into the pint gla.s.s as far as it would go and was understood to say that that was about the long and the short of it.
Detective-Inspector Sloan let out a great shout of laughter.
"Please, sir," begged Hirst. "Not here in a public bar. The General wouldn"t like it."
"No," agreed Sloan. "I can see now why he didn"t like my asking him if he was called Hocklington-Garwell. In the circ.u.mstances, I"m not sure that I would have cared for it myself. Would a note of apology help?"
"It might, sir." Hirst sounded grateful. "But why did you do it, sir? It"s all such a long time ago now. We never had any children in the family, sir, so we never had any nurseat all. And there"s no call for a nursemaid without babies to look after, is there?"
"I asked him, Hirst, because a woman, who is also dead now, had a sense of humour."
"Really, sir?" Hirst was polite but sounded unconvinced.
"Yes, Hirst, really. I never met her but I am coming to know her quite well. She misled me at first but I think I am beginning to understand her now."
"Indeed, sir?"
"A very interesting woman. Give me your gla.s.s, will you?"
"Thank you, sir. I don"t mind if I do."
The Rector of Larking and Mrs. Meyton joined Henrietta as soon as the inquest was over. She was standing talking to Bill Thorpe and Arbican.
"There is very little more you can do at this stage, Miss Jenkins," the solicitor was saying. "You must, of course, be available for the adjourned inquest."
"I shan"t run away." Henrietta sounded as if she had had enough of life for one morning.
"Of course not," pacifically. "And then there will be the question of intestacy."
"What does that mean?"
Mr. Meyton coughed. "I think that is the greatest virtue of education..."
Arbican turned politely to the Rector, who said: "You learn the importance of admitting you don"t know."
"Quite so." Arbican turned back to Henrietta. "Grace Jenkins appears to have died without making a will. That is to say"-legal-fashion, he qualified the statement immediately-"we cannot find one. It hasn"t been deposited with the bank, nor presumably with any Berebury solicitor..."
"How do you know that?" asked Bill Thorpe.
"There is a fairly full account of the accident in yesterday"s local newspaper. I think any Berebury firm holding such a will would have made themselves known by now."
"The bureau," said Henrietta heavily. "I expect it was in the bureau."
There was a little silence. They had nearly forgotten the bureau.
Arbican coughed. "In the meantime, I think perhaps the best course of action would be..."
"I think," Bill Thorpe interrupted firmly, "that the best course of action would be for me to marry Henrietta as quickly as possible."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
Rooden Parva was really little more than a hamlet.
It lay in the farthest corner of the county, south of Calle-ford and south of the much more substantial village of Great Rooden. Sloan and Crosby got there at about half-past two when the calm of a country Sat.u.r.day afternoon had descended on a scene that could never have been exactly lively.
"This is a dead-and-alive hole, all right," said Crosby. They had pulled up at the only garage in Rooden Parva to ask the way and he had pushed a bell marked FOR SERVICE beside the solitary petrol pump.
Nothing whatsoever happened.
"Try the shop," suggested Sloan tetchily.
They were luckier there. Crosby came out smelling faintly of paraffin and said Holly Tree Farm was about a mile and a half out in the country.
"This being Piccadilly Circus, I suppose," said Sloan lookat all of twelve houses cl.u.s.tered together.
"They said we can"t miss it," said Crosby. "There"s only one road anyway."
Holly Tree Farm lay at the end of it. It, too, had fallen into a sort of rural torpor, though this appeared to be a permanent state and in no way connected with its being Sat.u.r.day afternoon. The front door, dimly visible behind a barricade of holly trees, looked as if it hadn"t been opened in years. Knocking on the back one alerted a few hens which were pecking about in the yard but nothing and n.o.body else. The farmhouse was old, a long low building with windows designed to keep out the light and a back door built for small men.
They turned their attention to the yard. A long barn lay on the left, its thatched roof proving fertile ground for all manner of vegetation. Beyond was a sinister little shed about whose true function Sloan was in no doubt at all. Two elderly tractors stood in another corner beside a rusty implement whose nature was obscure to the two town bred policemen.
"Is that a harrow?" asked Crosby uncertainly.
"I"d put it in the Chamber of Horrors if it was mine," began Sloan when suddenly they were not alone any more.
A woman wearing an old raincoat emerged cautiously from behind the barn.
"Are you from the Milk Marketing Board?" she called, keeping her distance.
Sloan said they were not.
She advanced a little.
"The Ministry of Agriculture?"
Sloan shook his head and she came nearer still.
"No," she said ambiguously, "I can see you"re not from them." She had a weatherbeaten face, burnt by sun and wind and she could have been almost any age at all. Besides her old raincoat, she had on a serge skirt and black Wellington boots. "We paid the rates..."
There were no visitors at Holly Tree Farm it seemed, save official ones. Sloan explained that he was looking for a man called Cyril Jenkins.
"Jenkins," she repeated vaguely. "Not here. There"s just me and Walsh here."
"Now," agreed Sloan. "But once there were Jenkins"s here."
Her face cleared. "That"s right. Afore us."
"Splendid," said Sloan warmly. "Now, do you know what became of them?"
"The old chap died," she said. "Before our time. We"ve been here twenty years, you know."
Sloan didn"t doubt it. It was certainly twenty years since anyone repaired the barn roof.
"We got it off the old chap," she said. "The young "un didn"t seem to want it."
"The young "un?" Sloan strove to hide his interest.
"Yes." She looked at him curiously. "He didn"t want it. He"d been away, you know, in the war."
"That"s right."
"Didn"t seem as if he could settle afterwards. Not here."
Sloan could well believe it. Aloud he said, "It isn"t easy if you"ve been away for any time."
"No." She stood considering the two men. "Times, it"s a bit quiet at Holly Tree, you know. There"s just Walsh and me. Still, we don"t want for nothing and that"s something."
It wasn"t strictly true. A bath wouldn"t have been out of place as far as Mrs. Walsh was concerned. Say, once a month...
"This young "un," said Sloan. "Did he ever marry?" She nodded her head. "Yes, but I did hear tell his wife died."