Lawrence had found a new way of torturing his family. The grammar school’s junior choir had recruited him as a second treble. This meant that, for the Christmas concert, he had to master the harmony parts of a selection of well-loved Christmas carols. There was nothing wrong with his voice. If he’d been singing the actual tunes it might even have been pleasant. But harmony parts out of context just sound wrong. Worst were those that started off with the right tunes but then veered off in an entirely different direction. ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’, for instance, stayed with the tune for the whole of the first verse, lulling you into a false sense of security, before flying off at a distressing tangent with ups and downs that made no sense at all. 338
‘I wonder, whether you might like to do that in the front room,’ Skelton said as he scraped a bit of abandoned marmalade off the cloth and ate it from his knife.
Lawrence skulked into the front room and, instead of singing, practised scales on the piano as loudly as he could.
‘Oh,’ Elizabeth said, ‘he’s a very merry old soul.’
It was her response to everything these days and usually got a laugh from her dad. But not today.
‘Are you all right?’ Mila asked.
‘Yes. Fine. I’ve just got rather a lot on my mind. Work things.’
On his walk, Skelton reduced the problem to two essential questions. First, should he tell them that at any moment Norris Lazell’s henchmen might turn up and kill them: and second, if he did tell them, how should he go about it?
There was a lot to consider. ‘Oh, by the way, some bruisers might come to the house and kill you all,’ would be sure to spread panic and dismay. Worse, it would send Mila to the gun shop in Reading to acquire whatever she deemed necessary for the defence of hearth and home. She’d buy at least one gun. More likely, she’d buy four and try to teach the children and Mrs Bartram how to use them, with inevitably fatal consequences.
On the other hand, not telling them would leave them totally unprepared. They’d be sitting ducks.
Solemnly, he mooched back home.
An unfamiliar car, a Riley, was parked on the green outside his house and two men, big men in dark hats and 339overcoats were standing in the front garden.
This was it, then.
Skelton kept his distance. A shot, he reckoned, would alert the neighbours. They’d spot the car and the police would give chase. No, it would be the eight-inch hunting knife or maybe a stiletto. Probably the smaller of the two men had a selection of weapons in the briefcase he was carrying.
He held his ground near the front gate.
‘Hello, can I help you?’
The men turned and said something, but the words were carried away by the wind. They seemed friendly enough, but that, of course, is exactly what they’d want him to think.
Skelton looked at his wristwatch. At any moment, Mila would arrive home from her archery class carrying her bow and arrow. At fifty yards, even with the wind, she’d have a reasonable chance of a kill. At twenty-five yards it’d be a dead cert. The only problem was finding some way he could alert her that these men presented a threat and needed killing.
The men approached, smiling. Skelton backed off. Perhaps he could take cover behind the car and call for help from the neighbours, although he was at a loss to know what Mr and Mrs Meadows could do. They were both in their seventies and Mr Meadows was a martyr to rheumatism. They weren’t even on the telephone.
‘We’ve come about the sewers.’
They’d come about the sewers. This made a sort of sense. A year or so before, a lot of new houses had been built in the valley behind Skelton’s house. They were all connected to the 340main sewer. There had been a promise at the time that the rest of the village, which made do with often defective tank arrangements and soakaways, would also be connected.
Competent bruisers would do their research. They’d know how to gain your trust in order to get close enough to slice the jugular.
On the other hand, if they really had come about the sewers they must not, under any circumstances, be discouraged or turned away.
Few people in history have been called upon to weigh the risk of being stabbed against the chance of effective plumbing. Skelton came down uneasily on the side of the plumbing.
‘You’d better come in, then.’
With astute doorstep choreography, he managed to get his key in the door and open it without ever turning his back on the sewer men/bruisers.
There was a cricket bat in the hallstand. If needed, he could use it as a weapon. Skelton pulled it out and said, ‘Oh, there it is. Been meaning to oil it up before the season. Go through.’
‘It’s your back garden we’d really like to see,’ the smaller of the two bruisers said. He wore glasses. Killers can have optical troubles the same as anybody else. ‘That’s where the line would be running.’
Mr Nailham, the gardener, was in the kitchen, finishing off a plate of lamb chops with spuds, cauliflower and gravy. He looked up and nodded when Skelton entered. 341
‘Brought over a couple of cotoneasters need heeling in before the bad frosts come,’ he said.
‘Cotoneasters’ and ‘heeling in’ were as much a mystery to Skelton as ‘Syrie Maugham’ and ‘Czech cubism’ but he had learnt early on not to question anything that Mr Nailham said or did. It only led to upset.
‘These two gentlemen have come about the sewers,’ Skelton said. ‘They’d like to have a look at the back garden. I wonder if you could show them around?’ He turned to the killers and explained, ‘Mr Nailham knows far more about the garden than I do.’
The gardener finished his last spud and, still chewing, led the killers out.
‘His wife’s sister in Hungerford has been taken poorly,’ Mrs Bartram explained, when he’d gone, ‘so his wife’s been up there all week. I asked him, “Who’s cooking your dinner, then?” and he said he’d been having jam sandwiches. Well, I couldn’t let him starve, could I?’
‘No. Of course not. Are those the lamb chops we were going to have for dinner tonight?’
‘Yes, they are. But I was planning to do something with a tin of corned beef instead.’
From the window he could see Mr Nailham talking to the two gents. They were pointing at flower beds and shrubs but, as far as he could see, nobody was being stabbed. The man with the glasses took a notebook from his briefcase and began to write things. The cover of the book bore the arms of Royal Berkshire County Council. 342
‘Why have you got the cricket bat out?’ Mrs Bartram said.
‘Oh, I was going to oil it,’ Skelton said. ‘I’ll go to the butcher’s, shall I? See if Neville’s got some more lamb chops.’
He went back to the hall, returned the cricket bat to the stand, put on his hat, and checked to make sure he had his keys. He could have sworn he’d put them in his trouser pocket when he let the men in, but they weren’t there. Once or twice, he’d left them in the front door, but they weren’t there either.
‘Did I leave my keys in here?’ he said, rummaging through the cooking debris on the kitchen table.
‘Did you leave them on the hallstand?’ Mrs Bartram asked.
‘No. And I looked to see if they’d fallen down the back.’
‘Or in the door?’
‘No. I looked there, too.’
‘Have you been through all your pockets?’
Skelton began to pile the table with pencils, handkerchiefs, wallet, baccy, pipe and accessories, used train tickets, more baccy, string, loose change, vital reminders and – puzzling until he remembered – the comfrey leaves.
There was a hole in the overcoat pocket. The keys had slipped through the hole and were lodged in the lining. He wrestled for a while with the skirts of his overcoat.
Mr Nailham came back in, watched the wrestling then spotted the comfrey leaves. Tentatively, he picked them up and sniffed them.
‘What you doing with these?’ 343
‘Comfrey leaves. Somebody’s maid gave them to me. Said if I brewed them into a tea it would be good for my hip. Comfrey’s supposed to work wonders for bones.’
‘Them’s not comfrey.’
‘Really? The maid seemed to think …’
‘Where she get ’em?’
‘She said a lad picked them on some wasteland somewhere.’
‘Well, you should tell her to find a lad who can tell the difference between symphytum officinale and digitalis purpurea. Comfrey ain’t got the spiky bits there on the leaves.’
‘Hasn’t it?’
‘You make tea with that you’ll know about it.’
‘What d’you mean?’ Skelton asked.
‘You’ll be poorly.’
‘Really?’
‘Foxglove, isn’t it? It’s poison. Make you sick, give you the runs, make your heart go ten to the dozen.’
‘Really?’
Skelton went into the front room and found The Home Doctor. It told him that foxgloves were poisonous and that the chemical derived from them, digitalis, could, in very small doses be used to revive a heart patient, but in larger doses could kill.