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‘Sorry?’
The voice came back into clarity. ‘Pardon?’
‘Ah,’ I said sweetly, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were speaking to me there.’ There was a momentary silence. Now that I had his attention, I resumed my idea of crisp orderliness. ‘This is the Langton residence, only I’m afraid no one is here who can take your call. I’m a neighbour, you see, or rather the guest of a neighbour and I only stepped in because the telephone was ringing again. It’s been going all afternoon and I’d have answered it sooner only then there was a bit of a crisis in the village and I’ve only just heard it again now. I thought I’d better come in to answer it anyway. Just in case it was urgent, you understand.’
There was a pause when it dawned on me that I was explaining all this without having the faintest idea who this man was. Then it was proved that I hadn’t really been explaining anything as far as he was concerned. Just as I was about to ask this distant male his name, I heard him say on a faintly wearied note, ‘I’m not entirely sure I do understand, actually, no. Who did you say you were again?’
In the background at his end I heard an older man’s voice adding something pettishly. I ignored it and said, ‘Emily Sutton. I’m staying with my cousin, Miss Jones. At least I’m staying at her house while she’s in h—’
‘Well, Emily, I’m not sure what you—’
This time I interrupted him. Perhaps it was being sworn at, ridiculed and then called ‘Emily’ like some half-trained parlour maid that made me brave. I mean, anyone who was local knew my cousin as the daughter of the old steward, even if they had no reason to know me. And, besides, even at this time when war had done away with all sorts of obsolete social conventions, strangers could still expect to rank enough for a ‘Miss’.
I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t quite catch who you are.’
I was perhaps a shade hostile. It was slowly dawning on me that this man would want something from me. So when he told me he was Colonel Langton’s son I’m afraid I simply said impatiently, ‘You can’t be. He died.’
I think I was imagining this might be some extension of the scene I’d just left by Mr Winstone’s house, or perhaps I was comparing this caller with the sort of chancer who occasionally tried to convince my father that the rare and valuable antique he’d just listed for sale was in fact their long-lost family heirloom and theirs by right. Any moment now, this man would lead me into making a fresh statement about the family just so that he could parrot it back to me later under the guise of genuine knowledge before he set about coercing me into popping some supposedly meaningless family trinket into the post for him.
Only this man did none of it. After the smallest of hesitations, the caller replied calmly, ‘That was my younger brother. The Colonel’s other son.’
And my cousin had feared that a lack of tact would cause misunderstandings.
Through a stomach-gnawing fog of embarrassment, I heard him add, ‘This is Captain Richard Langton.’
‘That’s nice,’ I remarked faintly, while frantically trying to calculate how one addressed a captain. I finally tacked on as an afterthought a vaguely military, ‘Sir.’
‘Thank you. And now that we’ve cleared that up, perhaps we can return to the original question?’
‘Which was?’
‘Where is Mrs Cooke?’
I was coiling and uncoiling the telephone wire about my fingers. I had to stop it before I twisted it into a permanent state of tangle. I told him, ‘I’m afraid I don’t actually know who Mrs Cooke is. The house looks shut up to me; there is no one about and the kitchen doesn’t look particularly well stocked, although admittedly I can only relate the impression I got on my dash through from the garden. As I’ve already said, I only answered the telephone because it’s been ringing all day—’
‘Yes, yes; and you only heard it ringing because you’re visiting your aunt Mrs Jane or something like that. Please don’t let’s go over all that again.’
‘My cousin. Miss Jones of Washbrook.’
‘All right; Miss Jones. But that still doesn’t solve my problem.’
‘Which is?’ I’d been right about one thing at least. He was going to ask something of me.
‘Perhaps you could deliver a message to our driver?’
‘Is it an emergency?’ I don’t quite know what made me ask that. I suppose it was a legacy of the shock of finding Mr Winstone at the end of what had already been a very long day of travelling. I was wary of what fresh demands this place would make of me.
The question certainly puzzled Captain Langton. He said on an odd note, ‘No. It is quite important though, Emily.’
Again the address of the parlour maid or the charwoman. Though probably I deserved it this time. I was after all only here because I hoped to make free with his telephone in order to call my cousin just as soon as he gave me room to do so. Biting my lip, I agreed.
‘Good,’ he said briskly. ‘Could you tell him that he’s to collect my father from the solicitor’s office in Cirencester at eleven o’clock on Thursday? Heavens, that’s tomorrow now. That shows that I’ve spent all week trying to set this up. My father intends to go home for a while to …’ He checked himself. ‘No, those details don’t matter here. What does matter is that he’s met by the car tomorrow. Do you know our driver, Bertie Winstone?’
Oh Lord.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said inadequately. I really hadn’t handled this conversation very well. ‘Mr Winstone has had a bit of an accident. I’m afraid I’ve just left him as he was being whisked off to be patched up by the doctor. I have to tell you that I really don’t think it likely that he’ll be fit to drive your car tomorrow. Or any car, for that matter. I really am very sorry.’
‘You’ll have to speak up. There’s an almighty racket going on here. Did you say Bertie has had an accident?’ The man was hard for me to hear too. A persistent drone in the background was blurring his voice.
I told him what had met me during the course of climbing the hill to answer his call; that is to say, I gave him the bare facts about the whole neighbourhood being deserted all day, about finding Mr Winstone, the lucky timing of Danny Hannis coming home, the likelihood that the attack had taken place at the turbine house and, finally, I don’t know why, that I had met several of my cousin’s friends, including Mrs Abbey. I believe I might even have mentioned something about the loneliness that had inspired my walk up the hill in the first place. Apart from that, it was, I realised, the first time I had willingly given Mr Winstone’s injuries the title they deserved and called this thing an attack and not an accident. It was a peculiar kind of shock and yet somehow it lessened it to be telling this man and the Captain certainly took the information very matter-of-factly. I suppose as a military man such things might seem more commonplace and as a son he was certainly inclined to be more concerned with the news that his father was going to be beset by yet more inconvenience.
He was asking me, ‘Is it still working, though? The turbine, I mean. The house still has electricity?’
‘I’ll have to check.’ I presumed he was wondering if the house was even fit for his father to inhabit. He was very practical, this Captain. Whereas I think his orderly mind flustered mine, or perhaps he just made me conscious of the way the evening’s shocks had shaken me. I finally realised what I’d said and corrected myself in a rush. ‘No, I won’t need to check, sorry. I switched on the light in the kitchen when I came in. So, yes, the house still has electricity. But won’t that be from the batteries anyway?’
I was gabbling, confusing myself, but it didn’t matter anyway because he was saying something else and then I was distracted by the sight of Danny’s dog dashing by on his own business, past the window. He had obviously been left behind after that last ruckus in the car. I saw now that another small village clustered on the opposing hillside. The cottages were distinguishable by the yellow smear of oil light in their windows. To their right, another single streak of colour was shining lonely above the straggling woodland that trailed upstream from the unseen hollow where my cousin’s cottage stood. Apart from these few specks of life, the valley was solemnly left to the trees. Proving the point, an owl hooted from one near by. It made me realise that the Captain was still waiting for me to answer his last question.
‘Yes, sorry,’ I added hastily, then I realised I didn’t actually know what I was supposed to be answering. ‘Pardon?’
‘I was just saying that Bertie was lucky that you happened by. I should have guessed myself that no one would be on hand to answer my call if the housekeeper wasn’t home. The few village men will have been up in the fields, and the women and children too for that matter. They’re starting to gather the barley, I believe, and you should know I say that with all the confidence of one who hasn’t the faintest idea about the timing of these things. It was all still laid to sheep pasture when I last lived at home. Did you say Mrs Abbey was there too?’
My hand was fiddling with a pencil now since I wouldn’t let it toy with the telephone wire. I had to bend beneath the desk to retrieve it when the pencil rattled to the floor. I asked, ‘You know her?’
‘I should do. I’ve written her enough letters over the past few months. She’s one of our many tenants, or at least she is when she pays. We allow her a little grace because of her husband. It must have been a shock, discovering Bertie like that.’
I was busily thinking that Mrs Abbey hadn’t spoken terribly nicely of his father for one who owed him a debt of gratitude. I said, ‘I expect it was, but it hasn’t really sunk in yet. It didn’t really happen to her anyway, if you know what I mean. She only arrived later as a spare part to Mrs Winstone’s return.’
‘Actually,’ remarked the Captain mildly, ‘I believe I was meaning you there.’
It was then that the caller proved that he hadn’t been as insensitive as I’d thought to the strain of my evening. He’d simply been calming about it for my sake, and perhaps because he was practical and limited by being on the other end of a telephone.
‘But anyway,’ the Captain added, then his attention strayed as the noise increased on his end of the line, like when a door is opened and the bustle from outside briefly rushes in. With equal suddenness, his attention returned to me. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. My father’s train is about to be called.’
‘Is that Paddington?’ Abruptly the sounds clarified to be those of a busy station. I ought to have recognised them, having departed from the same London terminus myself that morning.
The Captain was saying rapidly, ‘My father is staying in a hotel tonight and he’ll get a car from there in the morning. He can do anything that needs doing for Bertie tomorrow. Lord knows what my father will do for his lunch, but I suppose that’s minor in the general scheme of things and will simply have to be added to the list of things he’ll address when he gets there.’
‘And what about Mrs Cooke?’
He understood in an instant. ‘If you’re feeling brave, feel free to have a quick look about and raise a hue and cry if you find anything awry. I’ll give you the name of my father’s hotel, just in case.’ He gave it to me and I had to jot it down on the corner of the desk’s large sheet of blotting paper. ‘But,’ the voice in my ear continued, ‘I shouldn’t worry. You said it yourself, the kitchen is bare. She’s probably just gone off to visit friends and hoped we wouldn’t notice. And if she hasn’t, well, my father will be back tomorrow. Either way, try not to worry. I hardly think this is anything you need to worry about.’
‘Nothing to worry about at all,’ I remarked more dryly than I intended. ‘Except what your father would say if someone wasn’t going to the shop to get his lunch.’
He laughed. It came as something of a surprise after an evening of serious tones. Then he thanked me and said, ‘I suppose you could consider it a temporary employment? Will you do that? We can put your fee on account.’
In the background I could hear the noise of that train station again. In a very odd way, I didn’t want him to go. I suppose it was because this man was like a little touch of the familiar and the end of this conversation would leave me alone with my thoughts and the task of summoning them all in an effort to explain all this to my cousin. Embarrassingly, I thought he sensed it because he said rather distractedly as the sound behind him intensified, ‘Listen, if it will make you feel more easy, we’ll speak further about all this tomorrow, if I can manage to find the time. And by the way,’ his attention briefly fixed on me again before he went to help his father find his train. ‘I’m sorry I was rude to you. You can put that on account too.’
Then, having stunned me with his sudden apology, which left no room for reply as he moved to end the call and I prepared to rest my own receiver on the cradle, I heard his distant voice add an urgent, ‘Hello? Emily, are you still there?’
‘Yes?’
‘I should have asked. Did you get Bertie to a doctor?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I mentioned it just now. As I left he was being parcelled off there by his son and—’ I was interrupted by the surprise of Freddy appearing in the doorway and switching on the light. After the easy gloom of nightfall, it was blinding.
Oblivious to the way my eyes were stinging, the voice by my ear prompted impatiently, ‘And who? Quickly please.’
‘Mr Croft.’ I said it thoughtlessly. Then I remembered Mrs Abbey’s barbs and realised what I might have done. Impulsively I added, ‘I’m sorry, Captain.’
But the apology wasn’t really for the sake of the sharp exclamation that was transmitted down the telephone wire only to be followed curtly by something like: ‘Why on earth …? Oh hell, I really have to go. I wish … Thank you for this, I think … but really, of all the people … Why on earth did you have to involve him?’
As I say, it wasn’t the strength of the Captain’s oath that shook all thought of disappearing housekeepers and injured old men and even my plan of telephoning my cousin from my head. It was the way the garish light had revealed that all the Captain’s sentiments had appeared first on Freddy’s face; and had intensified there just as soon as the boy guessed who was on the other end of the line.
Chapter 5 (#u6c0a0f35-f7e5-5851-8e6f-61eead70f44e)
Freddy’s face regained colour almost the moment we stepped back outside into the warm evening and I was relieved to see it. There was no question now of dithering to telephone my cousin in the hope that she’d suggest I gave up the cottage and instead take a room in a hotel near her in Gloucester, nor did I spare much thought for worrying about strangers or the whereabouts of Mrs Cooke. This was more vital; this was my responsibility because I had brought him here.
The sense of it lurked in knowing that the time I had spent seeking that telephone was the time that had preyed on Freddy’s nerves until he had finally grown desperate enough to come inside to find me. His decision must have been prompted by a premonition of something very terrible indeed. I knew it had because the release as we left by that kitchen door shone in the flush that burned the boy’s cheeks. This was a kind of bravery that hurt. It was all wrong that such a kind, harmless youth like this boy should have ever known fear enough to think it necessary to overcome the memory of it in this moment for the sake of me.
I could see now that my cousin’s description of a wintery incident with the Colonel’s younger son had misled me. Her letter had led me to imagine something along the lines of an over-bred buffoon caught up in a tragic accident involving the March bad weather. The winter had been a chaos of deep snows and extreme freezes but, all that aside, several things were now very clear to me. The first was that the fracas in March was no more an accident than Mr Winstone’s collapse on his path. The second was that while my cousin had at least hinted that the chill of last winter had left its mark on the whole community, it had taken their reaction to Mrs Abbey’s mistake to make me realise the shadow of what had befallen still lived in this place. For Freddy, it dwelt in that house if not in that beautiful room with the bay window. And now there was a chance that the family was set to be brought back into his sphere again and a trace of the dread that haunted Freddy was even detectable in a grown man like the Captain. In the man it took a different form, but all the same, even in the Captain’s voice I thought there had been a glimpse of something that came strangely close to fear.
I could hear it in the boy’s voice now when he asked above the creak of the valley gate as it was opened and pressed shut, ‘They’re coming back then?’
‘They are,’ I confirmed gently. ‘Or rather, the Colonel is.’
I took Freddy swiftly onwards down the hill because I didn’t know what else to do. True twilight had descended in the time that we had been indoors and the hillside was a picture of warm summer tranquillity. I eyed my companion carefully as we neared the valley bottom. His face was angular in this light; sharp beneath unruly hair. He didn’t seem so much afraid now as resolutely expressionless as we passed beneath the scented dark of the small plantation of pines.
‘Did he say why the Colonel was coming back?’
I noted that Freddy didn’t consider himself one of the Colonel’s subjects. It was left to men like Danny Hannis to pay the squire his due deference. ‘No,’ I said carefully, ‘Captain Langton didn’t say why. He didn’t have much time because the train was being called. I imagine his father wants to come back and check that the harvest is progressing as it should. I do remember that he said something about the barley.’
‘Oh, is that all?’ He said it in that flat way youths have of dismissing something desperately worrying quite as if it didn’t matter at all. Then he said briskly, ‘They’re taking in a late cut of hay at the moment. The corn’s behind because of the late summer.’ It was said in a rush of an apology because he didn’t like to contradict. Then he asked in an altogether brighter way, ‘Do you think we should go and have a look at it?’
This last question was because we had reached the last turn of the track above the turbine house. The brickwork was rendered in crumbling plaster and it shone white before us against the curling black line of the stream. Now that I knew, this tiny hut really was quite unlike a dwelling. It was also unlike any electricity station that I had ever known. The power stations of London were great smoking beasts with towering black pillars for chimneys. This small brick house straddled a neat platform and water made a faint shushing sound somewhere beneath, where it was released following its racing fall through a pipe from a pond high up by the village. Further downstream I could just make out the broader area of the ford and, a short way beyond that, the end wall of my cousin’s cottage shone grubby silver where the trackway rounded the base of the hillside.
‘We can take a little detour to the turbine house to have a look, if you like.’ My agreement was given doubtfully. Then I perceived the fierce concentration in Freddy’s face and wondered if people persisted in asking him questions, probing what he knew, and it was this little inquisition he was presently bracing himself for rather than any particular concern about our recent trespass in that house. Immediately, I found I would like to examine the turbine house very much. ‘I know it would make me sleep more easily if I knew we’d done our bit to check that poor Mr Winstone has really left no sign behind.’
The change in Freddy’s demeanour was instant. It was, I thought, a reassuring sign that the boy’s life did not appear in general to give him much sense of fear but all the same I expended significantly less effort on looking the part of a valiant sleuth as I followed him over the last of the roughened hillside and worked rather harder at staying alert to signs of life.
There was no one here. The hut’s rotten door was locked. The single metal-framed window with its flaking white paint was securely fastened and nothing could be made out through the filthy glass. Concealed within would, I knew, be the neat little turbine and an array of vast batteries that stored the generated power for future use. It was all wonderfully clean and efficient, and also decidedly exclusive.
My voice sounded loud in the hush of a sleeping valley. ‘Don’t the villagers mind that their houses stay dark while all this awaits someone’s return to the Manor?’
‘Not really. It’s very old. It’s always been like this.’ Freddy seemed surprised by my question, which in turn surprised me. It seemed an odd mixture that he should dislike the Colonel and his family and yet apparently easily accept this. Freddy wasn’t set to be a revolutionary. He was just a boy who was very afraid that the Colonel’s return brought the threat of fresh harm to his tall and caring Matthew Croft.
We were peering for footprints in the baked mud of the bank above the stream. There was nothing there but the neat little hoof prints of thirsty sheep, at least nothing that we could see by starlight. There was nothing here to shake the overriding sense of my own care for this boy. I found that I was saying clumsily, ‘Mr Croft didn’t kill him, did he? Didn’t cause the son’s death, I mean?’
I shouldn’t have said it. I had only meant to establish the limit of the bad feeling between the Langton family and the other man before adding something reassuring, but the boy beside me, naturally enough, completely misunderstood my intentions. He was suddenly very ready to be angry.
‘No! Of course not.’ He stood there glowering at me in the night, hands balled into fists by his sides and hair all dishevelled again. This really was something that he was asked all too often. It also, I think, cut far too close to a memory of a near loss of his own.
‘Well then,’ I persevered gently. ‘I really think you needn’t worry any more. From the way Captain Langton reacted when I mentioned Mr Croft by name, it seems to me that the family is just as desperately keen to avoid an encounter with that past as you are. You mustn’t think the Colonel means to create a fuss by coming back, or that his return is designed to bring fresh upset for Mr Croft. Captain Langton was …’ I searched for a sensible way to put it. ‘Well, to be brutally honest, he sounded like a normal human being who’d had a bit of a shock when I mentioned that Mr Croft was helping Mr Winstone. You can believe me, Freddy. Really you can. So don’t be afraid for Mr Croft any more, Freddy, please.’
The boy blinked. I’d surprised him. He hadn’t expected my only objective to be plain reassurance. But he did, I saw with relief, understand it. For a moment, his fierceness had made him seem suddenly very young indeed. Then he abruptly relaxed.
Shyly, like a guilty child after a fit of the rages, he gulped and said quietly, ‘You’re very nice, Miss.’
‘Not really. It’s just the truth.’
‘You hope,’ he retorted, but he was only contradicting me for the sake of form. Then he abruptly abandoned the search of the riverbed and led the way across rough ground towards my cottage.
A drowsy bird twittered in one of the taller trees. It set off a cock pheasant, who set off another, and so on until the warning cry barrelled up and down the valley in a relay from one tree to the next. There were an awful lot of pheasants up there. Their voices mapped the twists and turns of the valley far beyond the point where it curved away into the smothering oblivion of darkness.
It made me think again that I really ought to walk Freddy home. I said as much and he sniggered with that boyish confidence that never fails to charm. ‘It would pose a bit of a problem though, wouldn’t it, Miss? We’d be up all night walking each other back and forth.’
We were at my garden gate. I set a hand on the weathered wood and tipped my head thoughtfully at him. ‘You don’t seem very nervous.’
I saw him shrug with hands in pockets. His attention was on a pebble he was turning underfoot. Tangled hair was falling over his brow as he said, ‘You said yourself that the fellow brought Mr Winstone home before he met you and bolted. There’s not much point in being afraid of a man like that. He probably didn’t mean to hurt Mr Winstone anyway. He’s probably just a vagrant who came back from the war a bit strange and Mr Winstone caught him unawares.’
‘You think it was one of Mrs Abbey’s squatters?’
The boy’s gaze lifted. ‘Well,’ he said simply. ‘No one who knows Mr Winstone would do it, so it must have been. Goodnight, Miss.’
And on that practical piece of reasoning, he left me and loped complacently off into the gloom. I walked rather less energetically into my cousin’s house and bolted the door. It was, I thought, one thing to be giving reassurance to a frightened youth about the way Captain Langton had spoken of Matthew Croft, but it didn’t do much for my own worries about letting the boy go. Responsibility always did take the form in me of a vivid awareness of the present set against all the things I should have done before but hadn’t. It was complicated marriage between duty and an enduring feeling of guilt that stemmed from all those childhood moments that had long passed and the knowledge that there would never again be a chance to repay what I owed to those people, so I’d better act well now.
But committed as I was to the idea of playing a fuller part these days, it must be said that helplessness was sometimes still preferable to the occasional experience I have had of the other end of the spectrum; the sheer chill of sometimes acting calmly where care and duty had united to override every other serious principle. Those were the moments that brought me into an acquaintance with the dark things in this world that I would otherwise have quite cheerfully ignored, and I hated them.
They made me wish I could run away. They saddened me. The idea that this life was placing me in the company of conflict filled me with a sense of hopelessness for the future and an urge to seek peace elsewhere. It was the principal motive for this visit to my cousin’s house, after all. Only now I had the memory of the other responsibility that had met me today; the one that had led me to pick up an old man from his path and brought me into an encounter with the long list of other worries that went with this place. So at this moment I was contemplating leaving this place again tomorrow and walking the two miles to the bus stop with a view to riding into Gloucester and joining my cousin, as if peace might be found there instead.
The single thing that checked me was my other fear; the one where I am afraid I will discover a few years from now that instead of finding the tranquillity I crave, I’ve actually developed a terrible habit of dramatising the more ordinary parts of life and fleeing from them for absolutely no good reason at all. So really I had no intention of going anywhere.
Except, of course, to bed and the hope that tomorrow would be an easier day.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, I also have a habit of falling into naïve optimism, and in this instance the lesson came in the form of a light knock upon the front door at about eleven o’clock as I prepared to go upstairs at last.
My visitor was Mrs Abbey and I’m afraid to say that for a brief childish moment I was tempted to feign deafness and leave her out there. But then maturity or responsibility or pure idle curiosity or whatever it was dictated that I opened the door and let her in.
As first entrances went, hers wasn’t favourable. The first thing she did as she stepped in a slinking manner out of the dark and along the cramped hallway was to eye the proliferation of oriental vases on the narrow shelf that snaked away at head height into the kitchen and remark, ‘I see Miss Jones hasn’t yet brought herself to clear away the old lady’s ugly knickknacks.’
They were very ugly and it was, I realised then, absolutely no wonder that I’d been running a long argument with the past and loneliness tonight. These feelings dwelt here in this house. Each of the rooms in this cottage was consumed by the fuss and clutter of a dead person’s tastes. In the hallway, my aunt’s commemorative plates joined a flight of ducks to soar away up the stairs. In the tiny sitting room, fading cross-stitch samplers competed for space with Victorian day beds and fragments of broderie anglaise. Upstairs, in the room designated to be my bedroom, there was just enough space between the display of thimbles and the miniature hazel hurdles for my suitcase and the bed. I’ve never met anyone before or since who could compete with the scale of Aunt Edna’s commitment to traditional crafts. All the time that I’d been working myself up towards going to bed, I’d struggled to convince myself that her shade wasn’t watching from the collection of shadows on the coat rack. She’d died six months ago and in hospital rather than here, but I wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t the sort to indulge in a spot of haunting all the same.
Suddenly, in an unexpected way, Mrs Abbey’s bluntness made me like her. It made me lead the way down the short step into the kitchen and I should probably explain why my cousin Phyllis wasn’t presently in it herself. The explanation for her sudden trip to the city of Gloucester had been left for me on the front step in the form of a note dated yesterday with instructions on where to find the key. Cousin Phyllis was trapped in hospital by the inconvenience – her words not mine – of a broken wrist. A friend of hers had scrawled a postscript upon the envelope with the information that the doctor was intending to keep Phyllis for a day or two yet and that this friend would drop by at some point to see that I was managing.
I thought for a moment that Mrs Abbey was the author of this postscript and that was why she was here. I even had the horrible suspicion that this woman was actually here now to break the news that my cousin’s bicycle accident hadn’t been an accident at all, and I had to add another act of violence to the day’s tally.
But she didn’t. She had nothing to say on the subject at all. She was far too busy proving that she was at least a little bit of a genuine gossip because she was enjoying the horror of the attack on Mr Winstone and the inconvenience of Eddington being half a mile on from here and the irritation that certain self-important gentlemen didn’t consider it necessary to drop a woman home.
‘Did you help them ferry Mr Winstone to the doctor after all?’ My bewilderment wasn’t easy to hide.
