As I watched, the shorter of the two paused long enough to wave a gloved hand and the other, seeing her partner’s greeting, came almost to the glass and made a deep and elaborate curtsy.
By the time I brought my attention back to Dr. Kissing, he was lighting another cigarette.
“Until last year,” he said, watching the smoke vanish into the rain, “I was still able to make my way to the top of the Jack o’Lantern. For a young man in tip-top physical condition, it is no more than a pleasant stroll, but for a fossil in a wheelchair, it is torture.
“But then, to an old man, even torture can be a welcome relief to boredom, so I often made the ascent out of nothing more than spite.
“From the summit, one can survey the terrain as if from the basket of a hot-air balloon. To the northwest, in the distance, is Greyminster School, scene of my greatest triumphs and my greatest failure. To the west, one has a clear view of the Palings, and behind it, Buckshaw, your ancestral home.
“It was at the Palings, incidentally, that I once asked the lovely Letitia Humphrey for her hand in holy matrimony—and it was at the Palings that Letitia had the jolly good sense to say no.”
“I’ll bet she lived to regret it,” I said gallantly.
“She lived—but without remorse. Letitia went on to marry a man who made a fortune adulterating wheat flour with bone dust. I am given to understand that they made each other very happy.”
A cloud of tobacco smoke made his sigh suddenly visible in the damp air.
“Did you regret it?” I asked. It was not a polite question, but I wanted to know.
“Although I scale the Jack o’Lantern no more,” he said, “it is not entirely because of my infirmities, but rather because of the increasingly great sadness that is visible from the summit—a sadness which is not nearly so noticeable from the lower altitudes.”
“The Palings?”
“There was a time when I loved to gaze down upon that ancient crook in the river as if from the summit of my years. In fact, I was doing so on that day in April, two and a half years ago, when the Bull baby disappeared.”
My mouth must have fallen open.
“From my vantage point, I saw the Gypsy leave her encampment—and later, saw Mrs. Bull pushing the baby’s perambulator along the Gully.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Surely it was the other way round?”
“It was as I have described. The Gypsy woman hitched her horse and drove her caravan north along the Gully. Sometime later, the Bull woman appeared, wheeling her baby south towards the Palings.”
“Perhaps the pram was empty,” I ventured.
“An excellent point,” Dr. Kissing said, “except for the fact that I saw her lift out the infant whilst she retrieved its lost bottle from the blankets.”
“But then Fenella couldn’t have kidnapped the baby.”
“Very good, Flavia. As you may have perceived, I’ve long ago come to that same conclusion.”
“But—”
“Why did I not inform the police?”
I nodded dumbly.
“I have asked myself that, again and again. And each time I have answered that it was, in part, because the police never asked me. But that will hardly do, will it? There is also the undeniable fact that when one reaches a certain age, one hesitates to take on a new cargo of trouble. It is as if, having experienced a certain amount of grief in a lifetime, one is given pass-slip to hand in to the Great Headmaster in the Sky. Do you understand?”
“I think I do,” I said.
“That is why I have kept it to myself,” he said. “But oddly enough, it is also the reason that I am now telling you.”
The silence between us was broken only by the sound of the falling rain.
Then suddenly, from across the lawn, there came a shout: “Dr. Kissing! Whatever are you thinking?”
It was the White Phantom, the same nurse I had seen on my previous visit to Rook’s End, now looking ludicrous in her white uniform and huge black galoshes as she came galumphing across the grass towards us through the falling rain.
“Whatever are you thinking?” she asked again as she stepped beneath the umbrella. I’ve observed that domineering people like the White Phantom often say everything twice, as though they’re on a quota system.
“I am thinking, Nurse Hammond,” Dr. Kissing said, “of the sad decline in English manners since the late war.”
His words were met with a silent sniff as she seized the handles of his wheelchair and shoved off rapidly with it across the lawn.
As she paused to open the conservatory door, Dr. Kissing’s words came floating back to my ears—
“Tally-ho, Flavia!”
It was a call to the hunt.
I waved like mad to show him that I had understood, but it was too late. He had already been wheeled indoors and out of sight.