‘Are you trying to let on you reckon one of us is a guilty party? Come on. Are you?’
‘Any such caper on my part would be dead against the regulations,’ Obby said stuffily.
‘Then why do you pick on me to take down in writing? What ’ave I done?’
‘Only yourself and your Maker,’ Obby remarked, ‘knows the answer to that one.’
‘And me,’ Ernie announced unexpectedly. ‘I know.’
Sergeant Obby became quite unnaturally still. The Andersens, too, seemed to be suspended in a sudden, fierce attentiveness. After a considerable pause, Obby said: ‘What might you know, then, Ernest?’
‘Ar-ar-ar! That’d be telling!’
‘So it would,’ Chris said shortly. ‘So shut your big silly mouth and forget it.’
‘No, you don’t, Christopher,’ Obby rejoined. ‘If Ern’s minded to pass a remark, he’s at liberty to do so. Speak up, Ernest. What was you going to say? You don’t,’ Obby added hastily, ‘have to talk, if you don’t want to. I’m here to see fair play. What’s on your mind, Ernest?’
Ernie dodged his head and looked slyly at his brothers. He began to laugh with the grotesquerie of his kind. He half shut his eyes and choked over his words. ‘What price Sunday, then? What price Chrissie and the Guiser? What price you know who?’
He doubled himself up in an ecstasy of bucolic enjoyment. ‘How’s Trix?’ he squeaked and gave a shrill cat-call. ‘Poor old Chrissie.’ He exulted.
Chris said savagely: ‘Do you want the hide taken off you?’
‘When’s the wedding, then?’ Ernie asked, dodging behind Andy. ‘Nothing to hold you now, is there?’
‘By God – !’ Chris shouted and lunged forward. Andy laid his hands on Chris’s chest.
‘Steady, naow, Chris, boy, steady,’ Andy begged him.
‘And you, Ernie,’ Dan added, ‘you do like what Chris says and shut your mouth.’ He turned to Obby. ‘You know damn well what he’s like. Silly as a sheep. You didn’t ought to encourage him. ’Tain’t neighbourly.’
Obby completed his notes and put up his book. He looked steadily from one of the Andersens to another. Finally, he addressed himself to them collectively.
‘Neighbourliness,’ he said, ‘doesn’t feature in this job. I don’t say I like it that way, but that’s the way it is. I don’t say if I could get a transfer at this moment I wouldn’t take it and pleased to do so. But I can’t, and that being so, souls, here I stick according to orders.’ He paused and buttoned his pocket over his notebook. ‘Your dad,’ he said, ‘was a masterpiece. Put me up for the Lodge did your dad. Worth any two of you, if you’ll overlook the bluntness. And, unpleasant though it may be to contemplate, whoever done him in, ghastly and brutal, deserves what he’ll get. I said “whoever”,’ Sergeant Obby repeated with sledgehammer emphasis and let his gaze dwell in a leisurely manner, first on Ernest Andersen and then on Chris.
‘All right. All right,’ Dan said disgustedly. ‘Us all knows you’re a monument.’
Nat burst out: ‘What d’you think we are, then? Don’t you reckon we’re all burning fiery hot to lay our hands on the bastard that done it? Doan’t you!’
‘Since you ax me,’ Sergeant Obby said thoughtfully, ‘no. Not all of you. No, I don’t.’
IV
‘I am not in the least embarrassed,’ Ralph said angrily. ‘You may need a solicitor, Camilla, and, if you do, you will undoubtedly consult me. My firm has acted for your family – ah – for many years.’
‘There you are!’ Alleyn said cheerfully. ‘The point is, did your firm act for Miss Campion’s family in the person of her grandfather, the day before yesterday?’
‘That,’ Ralph said grandly, ‘is neither here nor there.’
‘Look,’ Camilla said, ‘darling. I’ve told Mr Alleyn that grandfather intimated to me that he was thinking of leaving me some of his cash and that I said I wouldn’t have it at any price.’
Ralph glared doubtfully at her. It seemed to Alleyn that Ralph was in that degree of love which demands of its victim some kind of emphatic action. ‘He’s suffering,’ Alleyn thought, ‘from ingrowing knight-errantry. And I fancy he’s also very much worried about something.’ He told Ralph that he wouldn’t at this stage press for information about the Guiser’s visit but that, if the investigation seemed to call for it, he could insist.
Ralph said that, apart from professional discretion and propriety, there was no reason at all why the object of the Guiser’s visit should not be revealed and he proceeded to reveal it. The Guiser had called on Ralph, personally, and told him he wished to make a will. He had been rather strange in his manner, Ralph thought, and beat about the bush for some time.
‘I gathered,’ Ralph said to Camilla, ‘that he felt he wanted to atone – although he certainly didn’t put it like that – for his harshness to your mama. It was clear enough you had completely won his heart and I must say,’ Ralph went on in a rapid burst of devotion, ‘I wasn’t surprised at that.’
‘Thank you, Ralph,’ said Camilla.
‘He also told me,’ Ralph continued, addressing himself with obvious difficulty to Alleyn, ‘that he believed Miss Campion might refuse a bequest and it turned out that he wanted to know if there was some legal method of tying her up so that she would be obliged to accept it. Of course I told him there wasn’t.’ Here Ralph looked at Camilla and instantly abandoned Alleyn. ‘I said – I knew, dar – I knew you would want me to – that it might be better for him to think it over and that, in any case, his sons had a greater claim, surely, and that you would never want to cut them out.’
‘Darling, I’m terribly glad you said that.’
‘Are you? I’m so glad.’
They gazed at each other with half smiles. Alleyn said: ‘To interrupt for a moment your mutual rejoicing –‘ and they both jumped slightly.
‘Yes,’ Ralph said rapidly. ‘So then he told me to draft a will on those lines, all the same, and he’d have a look at it and then make up his mind. He also wanted some stipulation made about keeping Copse Forge on as a smithy and not converting it into a garage which the boys, egged on by Simon Begg, rather fancy. He asked me if I’d frame a letter that he could sign, putting it to Miss Campion –’
‘Darling, I have told Mr Alleyn we’re in love, only not engaged on account I’ve got scruples.’
‘Camilla, darling! Putting it to her that she ought to accept for his ease of spirit, as it were, and for the sake of the late Mrs Elizabeth Campion’s memory.’
‘My mum,’ Camilla said in explanation.
‘And then he went. He proposed,
