The next few days were spent quietly at home. Now that the spring weather was cheering up, we resumed our morning walks and then spent our days in cheerful industry. I embarked on a programme of spring cleaning of the sort that had made the hero of Mr Graham’s popular new children’s book say, “Hang spring cleaning!” and set off for adventures on the water with Ratty.
Lady Hardcastle continued to correspond with friends and acquaintances from around the world on subjects from embroidery and knitting, through painting and music, and on to electronics and Dr Einstein’s “Special Relativity”, and was never happier than when she was sitting at her desk setting down her thoughts on one of those, or any number of other subjects.
To my dismay, one of her many correspondents – a lady with whom she usually discussed developments in modern music – was also a keen gardener and she became fixated once more on the creation of “the perfect English country garden”, despite the inconvenient facts that neither of us knew the first thing about horticulture and she was deathly afraid of spiders. Nevertheless, there was much talk and fanciful planning and I feared that the burden of the duties of Head Gardener would fall to me unless I did something to prevent it.
And so it was that I was rather pleased with myself when I subtly diverted one of our regular walks in the woods such that we passed close to Jed Halfpenny’s caravan again and Lady Hardcastle managed to come up with the idea, with no prompting from me whatsoever, that Old Jed would almost certainly make the most wonderful gardener. We bearded him in his lair and she offered him the job there and then. To my immense (and continuing) relief, he accepted and I was forever spared the ordeal of planting, weeding, dead-heading and a great many other arcane and back-breaking tasks.
After several days of this bucolic bliss, our breakfast was interrupted by an urgent ringing of the doorbell when the postman delivered a large, well-stuffed envelope.
‘Hullo,’ said Lady Hardcastle as I handed her the package. ‘And what have we here?’
‘Might I respectfully suggest opening it and finding out, my lady?’ I said.
‘You have all the best ideas, Flo,’ she said, and slit open the flap with her silver letter opener. She took out the sheaf of papers and read the covering letter. ‘It’s from Brookfield,’ she said.
‘Brookfield, my lady,’ I said, automatically.
‘Oh,’ she said with some dismay. ‘What did I say?’
I thought back. ‘Brookfield, my lady,’ I said, slowly.
‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘It seems he went ahead and spoke to his other two suspects without us, but still wants us to look over the transcripts to see if we agree with him as to which of them is guilty.’
‘He seems reluctant to let us go, no matter how much we irritate him,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘He does, rather, doesn’t he. I wonder what he’s up to.’
‘He probably just feels himself to be out of his depth,’ I suggested. ‘Even a despised mentor is better than none when you don’t know what you’re doing.’
‘I haven’t been anyone’s mentor for simply ages,’ she said. ‘I do like the sound of that. Let’s see what I can see. Any chance of a cup of coffee while I read, pet?’
‘In two shakes, my lady.’ I left her to it.
‘With cake!’ she called as I entered the kitchen.
I returned ten minutes later with a tray laden with coffee and cake and, after looking in vain for somewhere to set it down, took it through to the dining room.
‘Good thinking,’ she called. ‘I’ll join you in there in a minute.’
I poured two cups of coffee and waited for her to finish reading and come through.
‘I say,’ she said as she came in, holding the sheaf of paper, ‘that cake looks scrumptious. You’ve outdone yourself this time, Florence, dear.’ She sat down and helped herself.
‘Thank you, my lady, it’s nice to be appreciated. So, who did it?’
‘Did it? Oh, I see. Under other circumstances I’d let you read the notes and make up your own mind, but I fear that would be what our colonial cousins term “cruel and unusual punishment”. If you thought the interview with Craine was dull, you clearly have no idea of the depths of tedium to which some interviews can sink. I’m as certain as I can be that neither of these drivelling nincompoops is capable of arriving on time for dinner still less committing or commissioning a murder.’ She slapped the papers down on the table. ‘James Stansbridge, third in line to the Earldom of wherever it was–’
‘Keynsham, my lady,’ I said.
‘Really? Even the title he won’t be getting is dull. Anyway, the honourable James is in debt because he loses so very badly at cards. And he loses at cards because he has the wit and imagination of an aspidistra. The idea of his coming up with a solution to his debt problem as radical as murdering his creditor is absurd. I doubt the fellow can tie his shoelaces without help.’
I said nothing about a certain lady of my acquaintance who was incapable of getting into her corsets without assistance and who had once nearly throttled herself with the laces. Instead I said, ‘But his father the Earl might have a bit more about him.’
‘I considered that, but a quick skim through the society pages reveals the Earl to be a first class nincompoop, in his own right. Meanwhile, Redvers Hinkley, accountant and prospective councillor, is such a shambling muttonhead that I fear for the future of that great city should he ever be elected to take part in its governance.’
‘So it couldn’t be him, then?’
‘Once again, this fellow comes across as someone who would find it difficult to locate his own backside with both hands.’
‘I can’t help but feel that these assessments lack your usual scientific rigour, my lady,’ I said.
She sighed. ‘Perhaps. But, I mean… really. We pray that criminals never become too clever lest we mere mortals find ourselves unable to outwit them, but any of Mr Brookfield’s “top suspects” could be easily outwitted by a sleepy two-year-old. I can’t prove that they’re all innocent, but I refuse to believe anything else.’
‘Righto, my lady. And where does that leave us?’
‘“Us”, pet? We’re where we always were, sitting on the touchline and enjoying the early Gloucestershire summer. We might cheer the occasional good tackle, or urge our team to greater efforts in the scrummage, but for the most part we’re free to sip our G&Ts and gossip about the goings-on in the village.’
‘Are there any goings-on in the village, my lady?’ I asked.
‘None that you don’t already know about, I shouldn’t wonder,’ she said. ‘You seem very much to have your finger on the pulse of village life these days.’
‘One tries to keep up with the gossip, my lady. One never knows when knowledge like that might come in handy.’
‘Quite so, pet, quite so. Now, since Mr Bramble’s promise of adventure has come to nought–’