hasn’t assaulted you either.’ Yet, said the ensuing pause.
‘We didn’t mean no harm,’ offered Ginger, between sullenness and fright.
‘I’m sure you didn’t. I’ll telephone the police, and then you can sit down with me, and have a biscuit, and while we wait you can tell me what you did mean.’
The call was made, and somehow the boys didn’t argue, perching nervously on the edge of Bartlemy’s sofa and nibbling home-made biscuits while Hoover stood by, watching them in a proprietary manner. Ginger was known for beating up older boys, and the little Asian made up in aggression what he lacked in size, but they sat as quiet as if they were at a vicarage tea-party, and God was waiting with a thunderbolt for one of them to burp.
‘Someone sent you here, didn’t they?’ said Bartlemy. ‘What were you looking for?’
Mouths opened and shut, and Ginger choked on a biscuit crumb, but this time it was Ram who looked most afraid.
‘No one sent us,’ he said at last.
‘It was your own idea?’
‘Yeah. Yeah. I’m the one with the ideas.’
‘Do you think it was a good idea?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure no one sent you?’ Bartlemy persisted.
Ram turned pale, and his mouth closed tight, and he looked almost relieved when the police arrived. He knew just how not to talk to the police. He’d sat through many interrogations, he was still underage, and insofar as it concerned himself he knew the law as well as any solicitor. But this man with his unruffled manner, and his alarming dog, and his calm blue gaze that seemed to see straight into your mind – this was something far more demoralizing than any bullying copper. Ram had a horrible feeling that given time – and a few more biscuits – he would have been telling Bartlemy things even his mother didn’t know. He was secretly thankful to settle for the more familiar option.
Watching them go with a sigh, Bartlemy surmised that if they had been sent, Ginger, at least, knew nothing of it. He returned to bed, and in the half-hour before sleep considered possible lines of inquiry. A few days later, he telephoned an acquaintance in the CID.
Some months had passed since their last meeting, and Inspector Pobjoy had become Chief Inspector, helped by his recent arrest of a serial killer when most of his colleagues hadn’t believed any murders had actually taken place. Bartlemy had been involved in that affair, which had been vaguely connected to the former theft at Thornyhill, and Pobjoy still darkly suspected that he knew many facts which had never emerged. There had been too many loopholes in the case, too many loose ends. Not that Bartlemy had ever been a suspect, though perhaps he should have been, caught as he was in the middle of things. However, Pobjoy was curiously glad to hear from him, and intrigued at the news of the attempted burglary, and he agreed instantly to come to Thornyhill for a cup of tea and an informal chat.
‘You should lock your back door,’ he suggested when they met.
‘But if I did that,’ Bartlemy said, ‘people wouldn’t be able to get in.’ It was unanswerable. ‘Anyway, they broke a window. That’s the kind they were: crude, not very clever. The sort who would always break a window, if there was a window to break. I was rather surprised to find them so unsubtle. Kids like that usually give this place a miss. I would’ve expected any burglar who came here to be more … sophisticated.’
‘Apart from that business last summer,’ Pobjoy said – carefully, since he felt the subject required care – ‘I notice you haven’t really had any trouble here.’ He added: ‘I checked our records.’
‘Naturally,’ Bartlemy said. ‘I assumed you would. No, we haven’t had much trouble at Thornyhill. I prefer to avoid it, if I can.’ He didn’t say how, but Pobjoy, who was not a fanciful man, found himself wondering if the house had some intangible form of protection. Apart from the dog. He noted Bartlemy said ‘we’, perhaps including Hoover in the personal pronoun.
The canine hero of the recent burglary attempt was currently sitting with his chin in Pobjoy’s lap and the classic please-feed-the-starving expression on his face.
‘Which is why,’ Bartlemy was saying, ‘I was a little … disturbed by what happened. I can’t help feeling there must have been something – someone – behind it. On the surface, there is nothing to steal here but books, some old but unremarkable furniture, and my collection of herbs for cooking.’
‘The paintings?’ Pobjoy asked, glancing up at a landscape in oils which seemed to consist mostly of gloom and a framed drawing so crowded with detail it was almost impossible to distinguish what it portrayed.
‘Generally done by friends or acquaintances,’ Bartlemy said blandly. ‘That drawing, for instance, is unsigned. Richard wasn’t satisfied with it. Later, he went mad. People have sometimes been curious about my pictures, but their curiosity always seems to fade in the end.’
‘You said “on the surface”,’ Pobjoy resumed, his narrow eyes narrowing still further, dark slits in the lean pallor of his face.
‘I have a certain article concealed here,’ Bartlemy explained after a pause. ‘It was entrusted to me.’ He didn’t say I am telling you this in confidence. Pobjoy already knew that.
‘The article which was stolen last year,’ the inspector surmised. ‘The so-called Grimthorn Grail.’
‘Of course, it was never authenticated,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Technically, it’s valueless. But I am concerned. I have lived here a long time, and no one has ever broken in until now.’
‘Is it secure?’
Bartlemy smiled. ‘No burglar would ever find it, I assure you,’ he said. ‘No ordinary burglar.’
Pobjoy let that pass. ‘You think those boys were put up to it,’ he summarized, ‘by someone interested in the Grail.’
‘It’s a possibility I would like to check. You would know if there were any likely collectors in the market for such items.’
‘Those kind of gentlemen don’t usually have a record,’ Pobjoy said with a trace of bitterness. ‘Too rich, too influential. But – yes, I should know. I might know. I’ll ask around.’
‘Thank you.’ He poured more tea. ‘By the way, how is our murderer?’
‘What? Oh – I don’t know.’ Pobjoy looked startled. For him, once a villain was convicted and imprisoned, that should be the end of the matter. ‘We never found any trace of his accomplice – the woman who masqueraded as his wife.’
‘I suspect,’ Bartlemy said, ‘she wasn’t the kind of person who would allow herself to be traced.’ He was remembering a malignant water-spirit who had poured herself into the shape of a dead actress – a spirit now returned to the element from whence she came.
Pobjoy, who hated loose ends and didn’t believe in phantoms, fretted at the recollection. ‘Do you think she could be involved in this latest affair?’
‘Hmm … I doubt it. Still, it is an idea.’
As
