‘Too right, guv. Anything else I can do for you?’
‘Not for now, sir. Thank you very much for your time.’
‘My pleasure, guv.’ He stood to leave. ‘Lady H, Miss Armstrong.’ He bowed. ‘Don’t forget, love, I’m still waiting to hear what I can call you.’
I smiled and bowed in return and he left the room.
‘What can he call you?’ asked Lady Hardcastle after Skins had closed the door.
‘I’ve not decided yet, my lady.’
‘Is it a difficult decision?’
‘No, my lady, but one can’t take such things lightly. There’s power in a name.’
‘There is, there is,’ she said. ‘Well, Inspector, what do you make of all that?’
‘If he’s not spinning us a yarn, it seems Mr Holloway and Mr Richman were up to no good. There seems to have been someone else involved who was...’ he consulted his notes, ‘...“posh but foreign” who might have been Indian and might have been paying them to smuggle something small into the country. Or it could be a load of old nonsense. But there’s some correlation between what he says and what Mrs Sewell said, so I should say it’s worth talking to Mr Richman again as soon as we can; at the very least he might give the lie to Mr Maloney’s tall tales.’
‘Would you like me to fetch him, Inspector,’ I said, but before he could answer there was a knock at the door.
It was Jenkins.
‘Begging your pardon, Inspector, but a telegram has arrived for you.’ He presented the telegram on a silver tray.
‘Thank you, Jenkins,’ said the inspector.
‘May I clear the coffee tray, sir?’
‘Yes,’ said the inspector distractedly as he read the telegram. ‘Please do.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Jenkins, and went unobtrusively about his business. ‘Luncheon will be served in half an hour on the terrace, sir, my lady. Shall you be joining us?’
‘Would you think me very rude,’ said the inspector, looking up from the telegram, ‘if I asked for a plate of sandwiches in here? I really do have a lot of paperwork to get through. Notes and such like.’
‘Of course not, sir, my only intention was to make certain that you felt welcome. I shall have lunch sent here for you presently.’
‘Thank you, Jenkins.’
‘And you, my lady?’ said Jenkins.
‘Actually, Jenkins dear, I have one or two errands to run in the village,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘So if the inspector is busy, I shall be slipping out for a while. I can get out of your way for a while, Inspector.’
‘Please don’t leave on my account, my lady,’ he said. ‘But if you need to be elsewhere, please do. Shall we reconvene at three?’
‘That will be splendid. So, no, Jenkins. Thank you for the kind offer, but I shall be away for an hour or two myself.’
‘Very good, my lady. Perhaps an early tea when you all return to work?’
‘You, Jenkins, are the very model of a modern… ummm… something or other,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Whatever would we do without you? That would be splendid. Thank you.’
Jenkins left, beaming.
‘What’s in the telegram, Inspector? Anything juicy?’ she said as Jenkins closed the door.
‘Quite possibly, my lady. Quite possibly very juicy indeed.’
‘And…? Is that all we get?’
‘For now, my lady. I think this afternoon’s interviews should prove very nearly conclusive.
‘I say,’ she said. ‘How exciting. But for now, we must away. Servant, neither shilly, nor shally. Let us leave the good officer of the law to his deliberations and hie us to the village.’
And with that, we were gone.
We left the house through the front door and set off for a walk into the village in the warm, late summer sunshine. The grounds were clean and tidy, but not luxurious, with the same air of faded opulence that clung to the house itself. The whole place was charming, comfortable and welcoming. I had succumbed to snobbishness when I first encountered the Farley-Strouds and had dismissed them as pretentious lord-of-the-manor types who were clinging to memories of their wealthier past and trying desperately hard to be something they were not. But the more I got to know them, the more I succumbed instead to their geniality and charm. They couldn’t afford to maintain The Grange as once they could, and they should probably have sold up and bought a nice little flat in Bristol or Gloucester. But that would have meant giving up the life they knew and loved, not to mention putting at least a dozen servants out of work, so instead they made do. I decided that I very much liked the competent and capable Lady Farley-Stroud and her charmingly baffled husband. The village was very much enriched by their presence.
We were walking along the grass beside the long, winding drive, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine and Lady Hardcastle was wondering aloud about some unusual bird she’d just seen, when I saw a strange movement out of the corner of my eye. I touched her elbow to alert her and turned to face whatever was approaching us.
It was Mr Bikash Verma, running at an impressively athletic pace and obviously trying to catch us up. Lumbering behind him, much more slowly and clearly none too happy about having to move even that quickly, was a gigantic, muscular man in what I took to be Nepalese garb. He looked like he could lift a horse above his head if only he could catch up with one.
‘I say!’ shouted Mr Verma. ‘Lady Hardcastle! Please! Wait a moment!’
She turned to face him and we waited for an awkward few seconds while he closed the distance between us.
Panting and laughing, he finally caught us up. ‘I say, that was invigorating. Thank you for waiting.’
Mr Verma, too, was dressed in loose-fitting clothes of an unfamiliar style, but made from a much more luxurious fabric. The man-mountain was still lumbering towards us and was still some way distant but Mr Verma paid him little attention.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Verma,’ said Lady Hardcastle, warmly. ‘How lovely to see you again.’
‘You too, my lady,’ he said with a small bow.
‘Did you enjoy the party?’ she asked. ‘Did I miss too much fun after I left?’
‘It was very enjoyable, thank you. And no, you didn’t miss much unless you would have enjoyed our ill-advised game of croquet by candlelight.’
‘Oh, I say,’ she said, delightedly. ‘What larks.’
‘There was certainly more larking than playing,’ he said, ruefully.
‘Wonderful, wonderful. Well, now then, Mr Verma, what is it that brings you careering across the grass at such a pace? What might I do for you?’
The muscle man had finally caught up and Mr Verma indicated that we should resume our walk. ‘Clarissa was telling us at the party that you are something of an amateur sleuth,’ he said.
‘Indeed I am,’ she said proudly. ‘With my faithful assistant Armstrong, I have solved many a mystery.’
‘Two, my lady,’ I said. ‘You’ve solved two mysteries. And one of those more or less solved itself.’
‘Very well,’ she harrumphed. ‘Yes, Mr Verma, I have solved one mystery and my maid here has helped me enormously by being a Dreary Dora and spoiling all my fun.’