Bobby Appleby came downstairs half an hour later, and made his way hopefully to the kitchen. Mrs Colpoys was polishing silver.
‘If you want coffee, Mr Robert, you must make it for yourself. A busy woman can’t be expected to run a cafeteria service. But at least the milk has come.’
‘All right, Mrs C. Do you mind if I get busy on the grill as well?’
‘Well, don’t make a mess.’ Mrs Colpoys rubbed vigorously. ‘There’s plenty of bacon, but don’t touch those kidneys. They’re for a sauté tonight. If you look in the brown bowl you’ll find some particularly large eggs.’
‘You spoil me, you splendid woman.’ Bobby moved contentedly about the kitchen. ‘I say, Mrs C, do you happen to know whether my friend came in last night?’
‘Of course he came in. He’d be no gentleman if he hadn’t. There are limits to the ways college boys can carry on.’
‘We’re not college boys any longer, Mrs C.’
‘Perhaps not – but it’s the behaviour that counts.’ Mrs Colpoys shook her silver-polish vigorously. ‘Your friend came in at I don’t know what hour in the morning. And disturbed your father, it seems. Your father poured a pint of milk into him, and then had to listen to I don’t know what nonsense. Not that your friend sounded as if he were drunk. I won’t say that of him. But so excited that your father had to put him to bed. He might have got you up to do that for him I’d have thought, Mr Robert. Not that you came home at a very early hour yourself. I heard you. And her ladyship’s light didn’t go out until she heard you safely in the house. But she won’t have let on to Sir John about that.’
‘Mrs C, you’re a very observing woman. I had to see somebody off on a train at Linger Junction.’
‘Well, I’ve no doubt an escort must do his duty.’ Mrs Colpoys sounded mollified. ‘I’m glad to know it was at least a lady, and not one of those young trollops from the village.’
‘You have a shocking old mind, Mrs C. It comes of a lifetime in good service. As a matter of fact, I haven’t spoken either to a trollop or a young gentlewoman for weeks.’
‘I don’t call that anything to be proud of.’ As she achieved this volte-face, Mrs Colpoys picked up a Georgian cream-jug. ‘Not wholesome, at all. And now you come gossiping, and keeping an old woman from her work. Now, stop it, Mr Robert.’ Mrs Colpoys flushed with artless pleasure as Bobby kissed her. ‘Here I am, behind-hand already, and not even knowing whether your father will be home to lunch.’
‘He’s gone out?’
‘Appealed to by that Colonel Pride. The Chief Constable.’ Mrs Colpoys made this communication with great satisfaction. ‘Urgent, the Colonel said it was. Sir John is a long-suffering man. Hurried away, he has, and taken your precious friend with him.’
‘Taken Finn?’ Bobby put down his knife and fork in astonishment. ‘Taken Finn to see the Chief Constable?’
‘That he has. And left a message for you with her ladyship. If you’ve finished eating me out of my kitchen you’d better be off and find her.’
Bobby did as he was told, and came upon his mother arranging a bowl of chrysanthemums in the hall. He wondered why she was putting in time in this ladylike way instead of slapping clay around in her studio. Then he saw that she had the rather still expression she wore when something disturbing or unfortunate had happened.
‘Mummy, what on earth is this about Daddy and Finn and Colonel Pride?’
‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tommy Pride rang up to tell your father that Martyn Ashmore is dead. Tommy just heard.’
‘That old man dead!’ Bobby looked blankly at his mother. ‘I’m very sorry to hear it. But why on earth should Pride have heard about it so soon – and want to get hold of Daddy?’
‘It ties up with other things, I suppose. Including the nonsense that you and those two young men were up to last night. I gather you actually did go to the Chase?’
‘Yes, we did.’
‘It seems to have been rather a dangerous place recently. Your father was very nearly killed there the other day. Has he told you?’
‘Good God! No, he hasn’t. You mean in some accident?’
‘It didn’t seem very like an accident. Equally, it might have been Martyn Ashmore who was killed…then.’
‘Daddy ought to have told me – I mean, when he knew we were going to be fooling around there.’
‘I rather agree with you.’ Lady Appleby was extremely calm. ‘But you must remember how much such things have been part of the day’s work with him all his life.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Bobby was surprised to find himself feeling rather sick. ‘Do you mean that the old man has been killed?’
‘Killed? Murdered? I’m not the police, and I can’t tell you. They can’t tell themselves, for that matter. Your father has gone off with his fingers crossed.’
‘Mummy – what do you mean?’
‘He told Tommy at once about what you three had been up to. Tommy was very nice. He said instantly he had some hope that it would turn out to have been a CVA.’
‘What on earth is that?’
‘It’s doctors’ and coroners’ shorthand for cerebro-vascular accident.’ Lady Appleby smiled faintly. ‘And that’s just technical jargon for a stroke.’
‘I see,’ Bobby said slowly. ‘I was taken in, you know.’
‘Taken in? Hoodwinked?’
‘No, no – I don’t mean that. Taken into the Chase by his nephew – Finn’s friend Giles. I talked to him. He seemed quite all right.’
‘But odd things were happening?’
‘I suppose one would have to say that. Ashmore and Giles had a talk about that beastly girl. It seems that the old man himself–’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘So there was that – shabby deceptions with the makings of something nasty in them, I suppose. And, for good measure, there was a demented keeper with a gun.’
‘I’ve heard that too, Bobby. And your friend Finn – he continued to hang around, you see – ran into something odder still. It’s my guess that a great many inquiries will have to be made. And that brings me to your father’s message. You know where King’s Yatter is?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You are to go straight there now, get hold of Giles Ashmore again quite quietly, and take him over to the Chase. Daddy will be there – as a policeman more or less, you should remember – and so will the Chief Constable and his surgeon and a whole crime squad. I’m sorry.’
‘Mummy, it won’t get me down – not even if I’m to be painfully exhibited as having been fooling around like a kid. Will Daddy think it awful?’
‘No, he will not. Of course, he will like it better if you show some brains. I expect you will.’
‘Thanks a lot. But, by the way, I don’t know about Giles. If I can get hold of him, I mean. It’s quite likely he won’t be back yet. But I’m forgetting I haven’t told you. I shoved him on the midnight train for London. He was determined to see the girl. Quite right, in a way.’
‘I suppose so.’ With an effect of some concentration, Lady Appleby stepped back to examine the effect of her flowers. ‘Whatever has happened,’ she said, ‘there is bound to be an inquest. Not all the doctors in the county, with the Lord Lieutenant himself behind them, could prevent that. In fact there’s a disgusting scandal ahead.’ Lady Appleby stepped forward again, and altered the position of the chrysanthemums in relation to the dark panelling behind them. She gave a nod of satisfaction. ‘Never mind,’ she said briskly to her son. ‘And now be off.’
‘Even if I don’t find Giles, I still go on to the Chase?’
‘Yes, of course. Don’t waste time.’ Lady Appleby smiled suddenly. ‘Only don’t drive that ancient thing too fast. Remember there will be coppers all over the place.’ She put down a pair of scissors. ‘Hoobin’s cocoa,’ she said. ‘That’s the next thing.’