CHAPTER XVII. The Right Answer
About the middle of June, Pettigrew received a letter from Exmoor:
“Dear Mr. Pettigrew,
I thought you would be interested to know-the baby was born yesterday, and it’s a boy. Dick Gorman rang me up to tell me, and I’m glad to say he’s taken the news very well. I have Doreen and Beryl staying at Sunbeam while their mother is in hospital-did I tell you, my housekeeper was stepsister to Bob Gorman, Jack’s third cousin, who lives at Combe Martin, so she is really one of the family?-and they are thrilled at having a brother. I expect they will be here another two or three weeks, when they will go to join their mother at Tracy Grange. It would give me very great pleasure if you and your good lady could come to spend a week here next month, after they have gone. The country should be looking very pretty then, and with no hunting going on, there won’t be so many visitors about. I may say I have at last persuaded Mr. Parkinson to look into the matters we discussed the last time we met, and there may be some interesting developments shortly. Looking forward to seeing you,
I am,
Yours respectfully,
J. Mallett.
PS. I have looked up the Sherlock Holmes story you were thinking of. I am sure you are right, but it seems to be altogether too late to do anything about that now.”
Owing to various difficulties and delays, it was not until nearly the end of July that the Pettigrews were able to accept Mallett’s invitation. On the evening of their arrival, they found him in his sitting-room contemplating three silver porringers, four silver mugs and half a dozen spoons of different shapes and sizes, alike only in their emphatic ugliness.
“It’s the christening to-morrow,” he explained. “Mrs. Gorman’s asked me to be a godfather. Odd, isn’t it, considering that I nearly disinherited her, but she said that if it hadn’t been for me she would never have known the truth about Jack, and by way of showing her gratitude she’d like to make me responsible for his son. Can you understand how women’s minds work, Mrs. Pettigrew?”
Eleanor, contemplating the fearsome array of silver, murmured that she found men’s minds also a little difficult to understand sometimes.
“I wish you’d help me, ma’am,” said Mallett. “I’ve been so busy with other things that the matter of a present went clean out of my mind, and I got these in on appro at the last moment. Which shall I have?”
Tactfully Eleanor steered Mallett’s choice in the direction of the plainest and least offensive of the mugs, and then they became free to talk of other things.
The christening was fixed for half-past three, with tea at the Grange to follow. Mallett was taking his housekeeper to the service and proposed that his guests should accompany them. Pettigrew was quite prepared to go, but Eleanor, unhappy in the knowledge that her holiday clothes would not stand up to the full finery of the Gorman clan on a state occasion, protested vigorously that outsiders would not be welcome. Eventually it was arranged by way of a compromise that they should accompany Mallett to Minster Tracy, but spend the afternoon with Hester Greenway, who was only too glad to entertain them.
It was a fine day, and the prospective godfather was in high spirits, until something occurred on the way that seriously discomposed him. As they turned off the high road into the Minster Tracy lane, another car, coming in the opposite direction, turned also and followed them down the lane. Mallett, normally a punctiliously courteous driver, pulled up abruptly where the road was at its narrowest, so that the following car had to stop also. Then he got out and went back to speak to the other driver.
He was gone some time, and when he returned it was apparent that he was, for him, in a very bad temper.
“That idiot Parkinson!” he confided to Pettigrew, who was in the seat beside him. “For months now I’ve been on at him to get something done, and he has to choose to-day of all days!”
Pettigrew could think of nothing useful to say, and accordingly said nothing. Presently Mallett’s sense of justice asserted itself.
“Of course, he wasn’t to know,” he went on. “And he says it’s too late to stop anything now. He’s promised to keep everyone out of the way as much as possible till the service is over, so I dare say it will be all right. But it is awkward, all the same. It’s my godson I’m thinking of. Are babies of that age easily upset, do you think, Mr. Pettigrew?”
Pettigrew assured him that according to his experience, babies of that age were not normally upset by the activities of the police, and Mallett regained his calm. By the time they reached their destination, the police car had dropped behind and was nowhere to be seen.
It was evident when they arrived that the second smallest church in England was going to be fairly crowded that afternoon. Several cars were already drawn up along the road, and Mallett had to go some little distance to find a parking place. Hester Greenway was in position opposite the lych gate, watching the gathering of the clans with unabashed curiosity, and Frank and Eleanor joined her while the others went into the church.
“It’s a wonderful turn-out,” she told them. “I really think there are more Gormans here than at the last two funerals. Dick has come, with his wife and both the boys, which I think is rather noble of them, considering. Unless the boys mean to try and drown the baby in the font-he has to live till he’s twelve to make things safe for his mother, doesn’t he?”
Another car drew up. From it alighted a plump young woman in a black skirt that fitted rather too tightly over her haunches.
“Ethel,” murmured Hester, as they watched her hobble uncertainly towards the church door on her high heels. “Why Tom lets her walk about looking like that, I can’t think. Where is Tom, I wonder? Surely he can’t have decided to give the party a miss?”
Even as she spoke, a clatter of hooves made them look round. Tom was trotting up the lane on a thick-set dun cob that seemed familiar to Pettigrew. He waved to them cheerfully as he dismounted.
“I had to take the old horse to be shod this afternoon,” he explained. “There was no time to get home afterwards, so I brought him straight on. Stand there!”
He walked through the lych gate, leaving the animal standing outside, its ugly, intelligent face looking over the churchyard wall in the direction in which its master had disappeared. Apart from an occasional flick of its tail to dislodge the flies, it stood as quiet and still as the tombstones themselves.
“What I wouldn’t give for a beast like that!” Hester murmured enviously. “How did Tom train it, do you suppose? It’s not a bit like his other cattle.”
Hard behind Tom came the party from the Grange, in all the glory of a hired limousine with a uniformed chauffeur. The baby was almost invisible in an elaborate christening robe that must have done duty for generations of infant Gormans, but he and his mother were both eclipsed by the majestic presence of Louisa, splendid in black silk.
“Well!” said Hester, as the little procession, with Doreen and Beryl at its tail, filed into church. “That’s another hatchet buried, it seems. What next, I wonder?”
It was a rhetorical question, but one to which Pettigrew was longing to have an answer. Some way up the lane to his left, he had noticed a car drawn into the side under the hedge, well away from those of the guests at the christening. Now out of the tail of his eye he could see that two or three men were following the perimeter of the churchyard, moving eastwards, away from where they stood. Their heads just showed above the wall, and presently the church cut them off by view. Evidently Inspector Parkinson was doing his best to keep his word, but, as Mallett had said, it was awkward.